This beautiful purple jewel is an artist rendition of W0855—a Jupiter-sized brown dwarf 7.3 light years from Earth. If the scientists who just published a new paper on its composition are right, it’s the first object outside the solar system in which we have observed water clouds—an amazing discovery.
Keep in mind that we have only detected water clouds on Earth and Mars. Jacqueline Faherty—the scientist who has lead the discovery at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.—says she has “been obsessed with this object since its discovery” by Pennsylvania State University’s astronomer Kevin Lehman
via Gizmodo
