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First Water Clouds Reported Outside The Solar System (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: For the first time ever, astronomers have found strong evidence of water clouds on a body outside the solar system. New observations of a frigid object called WISE 0855, which lies 7.2 light-years from Earth, suggest that the "failed star" has clouds of water, or water ice, in its atmosphere, the researchers said. "We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does," study lead author Andrew Skemer, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement released by the university. Scientists discovered WISE 0855 in 2014, using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. A later paper in 2014 (co-authored by Skemer) uncovered some evidence of water clouds in the object's atmosphere, based on limited photometric data (how bright the object is in specific light wavelengths). In the new study, Skemer and his colleagues used the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii to study the brown dwarf for 13 nights. Gemini North is located on the highest Hawaiian mountain (Mauna Kea), at an altitude with little water vapor to interfere with telescopic observations. These observations allowed the astronomers to make the first spectroscopy (light fingerprint) measurements of WISE 0855. The team found water vapor and also confirmed the object's temperature, which is about minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius, or 250 kelvins).
Does that mean the Solar system is gonna have rain soon?
You travel years all across the galaxy and, when eventually you go out of your spaceship, it rains!
Here, I wrote you a thing.
http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/we...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
You must be one of those people who wear symbols of execution and torture on there neck.
Get up!
Hi Pastor Mitch!
Have gnu, will travel.
And that's why it's a failed star. You know what water does to fire...
A freezing Brown Dwarf Star? How the F? But then I guess that means it must be producing some heat since it's still so far above Kelvin 0, and it is an extremely small one too.
Brown dwarfs contain thermal energy left over from the gravitational potential of the gas that formed them. Even Jupiter and Saturn emit more radiation than they get from the sun.
Of course. The sun is a fairly large star so you could see it for at least 50 light years.
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You could certainly if you were at Alpha Centauri - but it (the Sun) would be far from the brightest star in the sky.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So funny to see moral advice from a book with slavery, incest and murder by the heroes. Thanks for the update from the weirdo frontier.
Thank you for sharing.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Um, what in the bible says that we are the only intelligent species in the universe?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?