Water-rich atmosphere of super-earth 40 light-years away discovered - Newstrack India

Washington, Wed, 04 Sep 2013 ANI Washington, Sept 4 (ANI): A research team from Japan has used the Subaru Telescope to observe the water-rich atmosphere of a super-earth, 40 light-years from our planet. The astronomers and planetary scientists has used Subaru Telescope's two optical cameras, Suprime-Cam and the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), with a blue transmission filter to observe planetary transits of super-Earth GJ 1214 b (Gliese 1214 b). The team investigated whether this planet has an atmosphere rich in water or hydrogen. The Subaru observations show that the sky of this planet does not show a strong Rayleigh scattering feature, which a cloudless hydrogen-dominated atmosphere would predict. When combined with the findings of previous observations in other colors, this new observational result implies that GJ 1214 b is likely to have a water-rich atmosphere. GJ 1214 b is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, northwest of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This planet is one of the well-known super-Earths discovered by Charbonneau et. al. (2009) in the MEarth Project, which focuses on finding habitable planets around nearby small stars. (ANI) MORE... via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGoBrWo8pNu4dwyVb4GilUQV8KQiA&url=http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2013/09/04/73-Water-rich-atmosphere-of-super-earth-40-light-years-away-discovered.html

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