Getting a nice, good look at a planet outside our solar system can be tricky. Some exoplanets are way too cool and dim to observe. Many are virtually invisible in the blinding glare of their host stars. Others spin so slowly it would take days to survey the entire planet.

This is where a stand-in like SIMP 0136 — a hot, bright, planet-sized object with a thick atmosphere, extremely fast rotation rate, and no star to spoil the view — comes in handy. Although SIMP 0136 is not technically an exoplanet because it doesn’t orbit a star, it’s close enough.

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to monitor SIMP 0136 directly as different parts of the object rotate into view, researchers have been able to disentangle the brightness patterns of hundreds of colors of infrared light coming from different parts of the object’s atmosphere. The results reveal variations in cloud cover, temperature, and chemistry that provide insight into the three-dimensional complexity of gas giants within and beyond our solar system.