On worlds beyond our solar system, clouds of superhot sand drift through strange skies—and NASA telescopes are studying what makes them possible:
Most clouds on Earth are made of water, but beyond our planet they come in many chemical varieties. The top of Jupiter’s atmosphere, for example, is blanketed in yellow-hued clouds made of ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide. And on worlds outside our solar system, there are clouds composed of silicates, the family of rock-forming minerals that make up over 90% of Earth’s crust. But researchers haven’t been able to observe the conditions under which these clouds of small dust grains form.
Although they form like stars, brown dwarfs aren’t massive enough to kick-start fusion, the process that causes stars to shine. Many brown dwarfs have atmospheres almost indistinguishable from those of gas-dominated planets, such as Jupiter, so they can be used as a proxy for those planets. Silicate clouds may be visible in brown dwarf atmospheres, but only when the brown dwarf is cooler than about 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit and warmer than 1,900 F . Too hot, and the clouds vaporize; too cold, and they turn into rain or sink lower in the atmosphere.
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