First Evidence of Water Ice Clouds Detected Outside Our Solar System

A team of scientists have provided the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside our solar system.

The presence of water ice clouds has been detected on our gas giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. But, water ice clouds had not been found on planets outside the solar system. In the latest study, scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science used the FourStar near infrared camera to detect water ice clouds outside the planets orbiting our Sun.

They analyzed nearly 151 images captured over three nights and detected the coldest brown dwarf ever characterized. The object dubbed WISE J0885510.83-071442.5 or W0855 was initially observed by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Explorer mission. 

Chris Tinney, an astronomer at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW Australia and co-author on the result, stated: "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."

According to the scientists, W0855 is the fourth closest system to our sun. On comparing, the images taken using models for predicting the atmospheric content of brown dwarf revealed the presence of frozen clouds of sulfide and water.

"Ice clouds are predicted to be very important in the atmospheres of planets beyond our Solar System, but they've never been observed outside of it before now," said Jacqueline Faherty.

Brown dwarfs are too large to be called planets and too small to be stars and may be as common as regular stars in the universe. The temperature of these brown stars can be as hot as a star or as cool as a planet. Their mass is known to vary between that of star-like and giant planet-like. This celestial body does not have sufficient mass to sustain hydrogen fusion process that fuels normal stars.

The finding was documented in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.