Brown Dwarf May Have Water Ice Clouds Outside of Our Solar System

Water is a huge component of our planet. It forms Earth's oceans and clouds, regulating the climate. Now, scientists have discovered the first evidence of water clouds on an object outside of our own solar system.

Water ice clouds exist on gas giant planets that can be found within our solar system, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Yet this is the first time that these clouds have been seen on a planet outside of our solar system.

The discovery itself comes after scientists used the FourStar near infrared camera at the Las Campanas Observatory in order to examine the coldest brown dwarf ever characterized, named W0855. The researchers took a series of 151 images over the course of three nights and then combined them.

Brown dwarfs fall between planets and stars. They're too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that fuels stars, but they're not quite giant planets, either. Their temperatures can range from nearly as hot as a star to as cool as a planet, and their masses range between star-like and giant planet-like.

W0855 is actually the fourth-closest system to our own sun. After comparing the near-infrared images of this brown dwarf with models for predicting atmospheric content of brown dwarfs, scientists found that there was evidence 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 Jaqueline Faherty, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The findings reveal a bit more about this brown dwarf. This is of particular interest to scientists since brown dwarfs offer clues to the star-formation processes. They are also easier to study since they are commonly found in isolation.

The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.