Water Found on an Alien Planet

This is an amazing find:

First sign of water found on an alien world

“Water has been detected in the atmosphere of an alien world for the first time, a new analysis of Hubble Space Telescope data suggests. Water was widely believed to exist on the planet, but previous observations with other telescopes had failed to find it.

The planet, called HD 209458b, is about 70% as massive as Jupiter and is scorched by the heat of its parent star, which it orbits 9 times as close as Mercury does to the Sun.

Because it is one of a small number of extrasolar planets observed to pass directly in front of and behind their parent stars as seen from Earth, astronomers have been able to glean a lot of information – such as its size and mass – about the distant world.”