An eye planet located 50 light-years from Earth may prove to be habitable. Photo

New research from the James Webb Telescope shows that the beady-eyed exoplanet LHS 1140b, discovered a few years ago, may be an "Eyeball" planet with an iris-like ocean surrounded by a sea of solid ice. It is likely to be habitable.

The eye planet is located 50 light-years away from Earth. The exoplanet was first discovered in 2017, writes LiveScience.

Scientists first thought the planet, called LHS-1140b, was a mini-Neptune spinning a thick mixture of water, methane and ammonia. But new data from the James Webb Telescope suggests the exoplanet is icy and wetter than scientists thought. That means it could support life.

"Of all the currently known temperate belt exoplanets, LHS-1140b may well be our top choice to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world outside our solar system. This would be a milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets," said the study's first author, University of Montreal astrophysicist Charles Cadieux.

This exoplanet is about 1.73 times wider than Earth and 5.6 times its mass. LHS-1140b is tethered to its host star. This means that the planet orbits at the same speed as it does around its star. Being in a close orbit with its star, one year for the planet is just under 25 Earth days.

To study the exoplanet, researchers used James Webb's near-infrared camera and a slitless spectrograph. This allows the telescope to assess the planet's contents as light from its star passes through the planet's hypothetical atmosphere to reach Earth.

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