>>24281626 Carl Grillmair. Astrophysicist. He's gunned down as PDjT hints at declassifying space stuffs??

From 2008:

Water confirmed on distant planet

11 Dec 2008

Measuring the infrared light emitted by a planet 63 light years away has established the presence of water once and for all…."

Subtracted light

Instead of looking at the light absorbed by the exoplanet, Grillmair and colleagues had studied the light given off by the planet itself. To do so, the team had collected light when the planet was in front of the star and when it was behind the star. Subtracting the two signals gave them the light emitted from the planet itself. In 2007 the team did this for two orbital periods and found no evidence of water.

Now, however, they have had another try, looking at 10 revolutions and found clear evidence for water. The team looked at infrared light with wavelengths between 5-14 ?m, where they found a "bump" in the spectrum at 6.2 ?m, which corresponds to a specific vibrational bending mode of water - a spectral feature that astronomers expect to see in such a hot giant.

Tinetti told physicsworld.com that she was pleased that her group's 2007 sighting of water has been confirmed by Grillmair and puts the original discrepancy down to the extreme difficulty of making such measurements.

Help in the search for life

She added that the techniques developed by Grillmair and colleagues — as well as by other groups — could be used to look for water on rocky exoplanets that resemble Earth and could harbour life. However, she added that this may have to wait for the next generation of space telescopes such as NASA's James Webb, because Earth-like exoplanets are much more difficult to find — and give off much less light — than their Jupiter-like counterparts.

https://archive.ph/Rvdbn

Papers:

https://independent.academia.edu/CarlGrillmair