I’ve not had time to look at this closely, but there’s been some remarkable news about the possible detection of water in the atmosphere of an extra-solar planet. Wow!
Like I said, I’ve not a lot of time to look at this (Nature paper here), but thought you should know. I can point you to a press release by the Spitzer Space Telescope team, which starts:
A scorching-hot gas planet beyond our solar system is steaming up with water vapor, according to new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
The planet, called HD 189733b, swelters as it zips closely around its star every two days or so. Astronomers had predicted that planets of this class, termed “hot Jupiters,” would contain water vapor in their atmospheres. Yet finding solid evidence for this has been slippery. These latest data are the most convincing yet that hot Jupiters are “wet.”
“We’re thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away,” said Giovanna Tinetti, a European Space Agency fellow at the Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris in France. ” Tinetti is lead author of a paper on HD 189733b appearing today in Nature.
Have a look at more discussion at, for example, Dynamics of Cats.
-cvj
