New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal the presence of sand clouds in the atmosphere of one extrasolar planet, and a circumplanetary disk around a second. The study, published in Nature and presented at the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Alaska, concerns two planets orbiting YSES-1, a young star 300 light-years away. One of the two exoplanets shows clouds of silicates, minerals that color the atmosphere reddish hues. The other is surrounded by a disk rich in the same materials, from which moons could form. “These clouds are basically sand clouds,” explains Valentina D'Orazi, coauthor of the study and INAF researcher, ”and they help us better understand the origin and evolution of planets”. The discovery provides new insights into the atmospheric mechanisms and formation processes of giant planets, offering a rare glimpse into the early evolutionary stages of a planetary system similar to our own.