Clouds stream on distant exoplanet

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe a far-off planet in stunning detail, just by studying the tiny fraction of the light from its star that is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere. The team found that thick clouds continuously form on the night side of WASP-94 A b, which is 210 parsecs (690 light years) away from Earth. As winds carry the clouds from the cool night side to the lit day side, they quickly dissipate. The results show how tiny differences in starlight’s spectrum between the start, middle and end of a planet’s transit in front of its star can improve researchers' understanding of planetary atmospheres.