Astronomers explain why sand clouds appear around the planets

Researchers explained that most clouds on Earth are made of water, but outside our planet they

have many chemical varieties.For example, the upper part of Jupiter's atmosphere is covered with yellow clouds consisting of ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide. And on objects outside our solar system there are clouds made of silicates, a family of rock-forming minerals. But researchers didn't understand how sand clouds form.

The study showed the temperature range, atwhere silicate clouds can form and be visible in the upper atmosphere of a distant planet. This conclusion was made on the basis of observations of brown dwarfs - celestial bodies located between planets and stars - using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Clouds on planets with different temperatures

“Understanding the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planetswhere silicate clouds might form could also help us understand what we'll see in the atmosphere of a planet that's closer in size and temperature to Earth," said Stanimir Metchev, an exoplanet scientist at the University of West London.

He noted that the principles of cloud formation thereare no different from those on earth. The key ingredient can be a variety of substances, including water, ammonia, salt, or sulfur. As they cool and condense, they turn into clouds. However, rocks, for example, evaporate at a much higher temperature than water, so silicate clouds are only visible on hot objects.

For further study, astronomers collectedmore than a hundred observations and grouped according to the temperature of the objects. All of them fell within the predicted temperature range at which silicate clouds should form: from 1,000 to 1,700°C.

In atmospheres hotter than the upper limitthis range, the silicates remain in vapor form. Below the limit - clouds turn into rain or fall lower into the atmosphere, where the temperature is higher. Now researchers suggest that silicate clouds exist deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, where temperatures are much warmer than at the top.

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