GJ 504 b, which NASA calls a “puffy pink planet,” shares two out of three catchphrases with Kirby. But unlike the video game character, the giant planet is cold, faint, and, as a new study has found, probably salty. In a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal, astronomers present the first direct evidence of salt clouds encircling GJ 504 b, bolstering a theory from more than 15 years ago. At around 550 degrees Fahrenheit (290 degrees Celsius), the magenta-tinted world is among the coldest objects directly imaged by astronomers. Typically, these objects are too cold for ground-based instruments, but the team behind the new study was able to obtain its spectrum using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “When we finally obtained its spectrum, it immediately looked interesting,” Aneesh Baburaj, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral associate at Northwestern University, said in a statement. “But once we started digging deeper into the data, we realized it was not like anything we have analyzed before.” Pink, puffy, and ambiguous According to NASA, GJ 504 b is a gas giant with a radius slightly larger than Jupiter. However, astronomers have long debated whether it should really be considered an exoplanet, given its unusually cool temperature and uncertainty surrounding its age. As a result, astronomers also refer to GJ 504 b as a planetary-mass companion, or a planet-sized object orbiting a star, the team explained in the statement.