Water seen by starlight

摘要

An astronomer in the United States claims to have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet far, far away. Travis Barman at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, compared theoretical models of the atmosphere of the extrasolar planet HD209458b — a hot gas giant some 150 light years from Earth — with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The models best fit the data if water is present, he says, providing the first hints of water on a planet beyond our Solar System.