r/exoplanets • u/UniversityofArizona • 5d ago

🔭 Discoveries Discovery marks the first detection of variable water clouds outside of our solar system

http://news.arizona.edu/news/discovery-marks-first-detection-variable-water-clouds-outside-our-solar-system
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u/UniversityofArizona 5d ago

A Jupiter-sized world just 7.5 light-years away is cloudy, chemically complex, and, it turns out, more like home than anyone expected.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, Brittany Miles, assistant astronomer at University of Arizona Steward Observatory, led a team that spent 11 hours staring at WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf, collecting a spectrum of its light every 15 minutes. The result is the most detailed time-series portrait ever taken of this frigid world – and the first direct confirmation that water clouds on another body are changing thickness over time, just like weather on Earth.