Jewel Clouds? Exotic Weather Sweeps Across Giant Alien Planet

"This is the first detection of weather on a gas giant planet outside the solar system," study lead author David Armstrong, of the University of Warwick in England, said in a statement. HAT-P-7b, which is about 40 percent larger than Jupiter, lies 1,040 light-years from Earth. As a result of this extreme proximity, HAT-P-7b is tidally locked, meaning it always presents the same face to its parent star, just as the moon always shows just one side to Earth.