A PINK PLANET
GJ 504b is a gas giant that's less than sixty light years away in the constellation Virgo. Would little girls would love the Pink Planet? Yes, that's its nickname, though a member of the team that discovered it described it as "a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta".
What really fascinates astronomers isn't the color, but what's it doing so far from its star? Here's a
diagram showing how far the GJ 504b is from its star. Anything at that distance from our Sun would be out in the Kuiper Belt. It's a puzzle. Theories about gas giant formation can't explain how it got way out there.
