Clouds made of sand make for a strange kind of rain on this hot planet

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/15/ [login to see] /clouds-made-of-sand-make-for-a-strange-kind-of-rain-on-this-hot-planet
A faraway gas giant planet that's famous for being strangely "puffy" appears to have clouds that are made of tiny bits of sand.

The sand likely acts as water does on Earth, falling like rain towards the planet's hotter interior and then evaporating back up to form clouds once more, according to a new report published online by the journal Nature.

The discovery showcases one of the many kinds of bizarre clouds that scientists say probably exist out beyond our solar system.

Even though astronomers theoretically knew that clouds could form out of substances like rock or metal or salt, "now here we can actually look at it," says Laura Kreidberg, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany who studies atmospheres of distant planets but was not part of this research team.