Sources are saying that this would be the first time water clouds have been detected but originally, the suggestion that there could be water clouds on the same object started in August of 2014, six months after the brown dwarf was first seen.

The object astronomers are focused on is a brown dwarf and is named WISE 0855 because it was originally detected with the WISE infrared telescope.

The object is 7.2 light-years from Earth and is categorized as a brown dwarf rather than a planet not only because they are more common in the area, but also because it is apparently too large to be a planet and too small to have the nuclear fusion to survive as a star.

Astronomers continue to refer to this object as frigid and a “failed star” with water ice in its atmosphere.This evidence has been collected in a new study whose lead author, Andrew Skemer, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, co-authored the original study back in 2014.

“We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does.”

Yes, Science Magazine originally published these findings back in 2014 and is only just now confirming their evidence to make their discovery of water clouds on the object official.

The brown dwarf is said to be the size of Jupiter and was initially discovered by Kevin Luhman, according to NASA’s page on the now defunct WISE telescope project.

Keven Luhman, who is an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, used images collected by NASA’s WISE infrared telescope from 2010 to 2011 — before it was shut down due to coolant issues, which he and his team went through to target different objects.He was able to determine how close the object was by making comparisons of before and after images of its dramatic movement, compared to other objects in the area.

Another astronomer mentioned in the initial report from the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, D.C. Jacqueline Faherty, says that she’s been obsessed with the object since it was discovered during the scan, mostly because of how small, cold, and dim it is.

She was also especially interested because of how difficult it is to see which is why no ground-based observatory had detected it yet.

“I went to battle at the telescope to try and get this detection. I wanted to put war paint under my eyes and wear a bandanna, because I knew this was not going to be an easy thing to do. At the telescope, I’ve never been so nervous. I’ve never wanted clear conditions so badly.”

The initial discovery points out that the temperature there as frosty as the Earth’s North Pole.

In comparison to other bodies where clouds have also been detected, those clouds are said to have ammonia or sulfur and is said to be partially cloudy as opposed to planets in our solar system that are either full or partially cloudy.

Recently, the Inquisitr reported that water ice might have been detected in recent discoveries such as the dwarf planet Pluto, or the recently spotted white clouds around the newly formed dark vortex on Neptune.

What made it even easier to detect water clouds was the fact that the brown dwarf is solitary, or that it has no sun near it which made it easier to study.

The paper says that they had also detected sulfide clouds and not just water.

It’s also pointed out that in order for astronomers to be certain, they compared the object with water cloud models from celestial bodies in our solar system, which helped them narrow down their prediction to match wavelengths from their telescope in order to know for sure.

These signs of water vapor provide some insight into how similar the brown dwarf is from our planet Jupiter in size and storms, the only difference is that the storms detected on Jupiter are turbulent, the ones on the brown dwarf are not.

The confirmation of water clouds detected in space only adds to confirm that water is not as rare as we had once thought.

Source: Inquisitor