Astronomers may have found water clouds outside our solar system

A digital illustration of the newly-discovered gaseous planet Kepler-16b

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 9 July 2016

Scientists may have located water-based clouds on a celestial body outside our solar system for the first time ever.

Astronomers' observations suggest that a "failed star" called WISE 0855, located 7.2 light-years from Earth, has clouds of ice in its atmosphere. WISE 0855 has about five times the mass of Jupiter, a gas giant planet, and a surface temperature of minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does," said Andrew Skemer, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the team that discovered the possible clouds. "Our spectrum shows that WISE 0855 is dominated by water vapor and clouds, with an overall appearance that is strikingly similar to Jupiter."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.