Cloudy planets
Some extrasolar planets heavier than about two Jupiters may have much thicker, cloudier atmospheres than predicted. Accounting for those cloudier atmospheres may alter the estimated masses of extrasolar planets. Thayne Currie of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and his colleagues base their findings on the unusually red colors of three of the four planets orbiting the star HR 8799.
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