First water clouds found outside our solar system

Scientists have discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own solar system, about 7.3 light-years away from Earth.

Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune - but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now.

The team led by Jacqueline Faherty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington used a near infrared camera at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to detect the coldest brown dwarf ever characterised. Their findings are the result of 151 images taken over three nights and combined. The object, named W0855, was first seen by NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Explorer mission and published this year. But it was not known if it could be detected by Earth-based facilities. ‘This is a great result. This object is so faint and it’s exciting to be the first people to detect it with a telescope on the ground,’ Chris Tinney, an Astronomer at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia and co-author on the result said.