Scientists have found strong evidence for the existence of water clouds on a nearby brown dwarf, and it’s the first time these kinds of clouds have been discovered outside our Solar System.
The brown dwarf in question is called WISE 0855, and it’s the coldest known object outside our Solar System. Not that we know that much about it yet, as it’s extremely faint, but the findings could help us understand more about the composition of these extrasolar objects, as well as gas giants like Jupiter.
“We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does,” said astronomer Andrew Skemer from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
With persistence, Skemer and fellow researchers figured out how to obtain an infrared spectrum of WISE 0855, using the Gemini-North telescope in Hawaii, and recording a broader wavelength (at 5 microns) to that used in conventional spectroscopy at optical or near-infrared wavelengths (less than 2.5 microns).
WISE 0855 was discovered back in 2014, and is located just 7.2 light-years from Earth – relatively close to us, in astronomical terms.
It’s neither a planet, nor a star. In fact, brown dwarfs are sometimes called ‘failed stars’ because they’re somewhere between the two. They form in the same way stars do – from a gravitational conglomeration of gas and dust in space – but they don’t have sufficient mass to spark or sustain the nuclear reactions in their cores that make stars shine.

Source: sciencealert.com