The first-ever probe into the 3D structure of an exoplanet’s atmosphere has revealed powerful winds laced with boiling iron, sodium and titanium, setting the stage for studies of the weather on worlds beyond the solar system.

Astronomers on Tuesday announced their observations of distinct winds in separate layers circulating on the planet named WASP-121b, about 900 light years from the solar system. The winds create intricate weather patterns unlike any seen on other planets.

“The planet’s atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of how weather works — not just on Earth but on all planets. It feels like something out of science fiction,” Julia Victoria Seidel, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, said in a media release.

Tylos (or WASP-121b) is a gaseous, giant exoplanet located some 900 light-years away in the constellation Puppis. Using the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), scientists have been able to prove into its atmosphere, revealing its 3D structure. This is the first time that this has been possible on a planet outside of the Solar System. The atmosphere of Tylos is divided into three layers, with iron winds at the bottom, followed by a very fast jet stream of sodium, and finally an upper layer of hydrogen winds. This kind of climate has never been seen before on any planet.

WASP-121b in the constellation Puppis is a so-called ultra-hot Jupiter orbiting so close to its parent star that a year on the planet lasts only about 30 Earth hours. The planet’s day-side temperature ranges from 2,200 to 2,700°C, hot enough to boil iron.

Seidel and her collaborating astronomers studied the 3D structure of the planet’s atmosphere by combining observations from all four units of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, detecting signatures of multiple chemical elements and finding multiple atmospheric layers.

The scientists noted iron, sodium and hydrogen in different layers of the atmosphere and titanium below a jet stream generated by the winds.

The jet stream rotates material around the planet’s equator while a separate flow at lower atmospheric levels moves gas from the hot dayside of the planet to the cooler side, Seidel said.

The jet stream spans half the planet, gaining speed and violently churning the atmosphere high over the planet. “This kind of (weather) has never been seen before on any planet… even the strongest hurricanes in the solar system seem calm in comparison,” Seidel said in the release.

Astronomers have since the mid-1990s catalogued more than 5,800 exoplanets. Much of the current exoplanet observations are intended to probe their atmospheres to understand their planetary environments better. Efforts to study the atmospheres of smaller Earth-like planets will require larger telescopes such as the Extremely Large Telescope currently under construction in Chile.