The planet has been designated GJ 9827d. The exoplanet is 97 light-years away from Earth and revolves around a star designated as GJ 9827. The planet revolves around the red dwarf star once in every 6.2 days. So in other words, a ‘year’ on the planet is shorter than a week, by our Earthly reference points.
Water on a planet this small is a landmark discovery,” added co-principal investigator Laura Kreidberg from Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, as quoted by NASA.
“It pushes closer than ever to characterizing truly Earth-like worlds.”
However, it is too early to tell if the water is present in a ‘puffy hydrogen-rich atmosphere’ or the planet itself has an abundance of water.
“Our observing program, led by principal investigator Ian Crossfield of Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas, was designed specifically with the goal to not only detect the molecules in the planet’s atmosphere, but to actually look specifically for water vapor. Either result would be exciting, whether water vapor is dominant or just a tiny species in a hydrogen-dominant atmosphere,” said the science paper’s lead author, Pierre-Alexis Roy form Trottier Institute.
