Thursday, July 12, 2007

Water on a Distant World

NASA's Spitzer space telescope, examining a distant planet belonging to a strange class called "Hot Jupiters," has found the spectral signature of water vapor.
Water, in this case, does not mean life. HD 189733b, 63 light years from Earth, has a surface temperature estimated at 1,000 degrees Kelvin. It completes an orbit around its star every two days. Still, this is the best evidence yet for H2O on an exoplanet.

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