NASA's Hubble Telescope Detects Water Vapour In Small Exoplanet's Atmosphere

The findings of the study appeared in a report published on Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have detected water molecules in the atmosphere of a small,blazing-hot exoplanet 97 light-years from Earth. The planet, named GJ 9827d, is approximately twice Earth's diameter and could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy.

"This would be the first time that we can directly show through atmospheric detection, that these planets with water-rich atmospheres can exist around other stars," said team member Bjorn Benneke of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at Universite de Montreal. "This is an important step toward determining the prevalence and diversity of atmospheres on rocky planets."

"Water on a planet this small is a landmark discovery," added co-principal investigator Laura Kreidberg of Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. "It pushes closer than ever to characterizing truly Earth-like worlds."