James Webb Space Telescope reveals sandy surprise in distant planet

Illustration of an orangey and large star with a planet in the front. steam appears to emanate from the planet, indicating how close it is to the sun. the planet's atmosphere is sandy.

An exoplanet hosts strange, sandy clouds high in its atmosphere, a new study reveals.

While the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) may spend a lot of its time observing the farthest reaches of the early universe when galaxies were only just starting to form, it also spends plenty of its time focused on objects a lot closer to home — such as the atmospheres of exoplanets in our galactic neighborhood.