Astronomers have finally solved the mystery of the so-called "pink planet," an object located 57 light-years from Earth that had challenged scientists for more than a decade.
Thanks to observations carried out with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers discovered that the atmosphere of GJ 504 b contains water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia and, for the first time, salt clouds, a discovery that confirms predictions made by astronomers more than 15 years ago.
The object, discovered in 2013, orbits a Sun-like star and has a mass about 25 times that of Jupiter, placing it on the border between a giant planet and a brown dwarf. For this reason, scientists are still unsure whether it qualifies as a planet.
According to the research team, its temperature of about 550 degrees Fahrenheit makes it one of the coldest objects ever directly imaged. The spectrum of the atmosphere was obtained in just two hours of observation with the James Webb Space Telescope, a feat previously impossible with ground-based telescopes.
