A planet at maximum fluffiness

It’s not often that the word “fluffy” appears in a press release about a new astronomical discovery. It refers to the exoplanet WASP-127b, which orbits a star a good 500 light-years from Earth that is slightly larger than the Sun. An international team of astronomers has now not only detected clouds there, but also measured their height with unprecedented precision.

WASP-127b is a so-called “hot Saturn” – a giant planet with a similar mass to Saturn, but unlike our (cold) Saturn, it orbits very ...