Atmosphere of Alien Super-Earth Revealed for First Time (Clara Moskowitz)

This artist’s impression shows the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 1214b passing in front of its faint red parent star. The exoplanet, orbiting a small star only 40 light-years away from us, has a mass about six times that of the Earth. GJ 1214b appears to be surrounded by an atmosphere that is either dominated by steam or blanketed by thick clouds or hazes. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Dec. 1, 2010 (SPACE.com) -- The first-ever analysis of the atmosphere of an alien planet classified as a so-called "super-Earth" has revealed a distant world that is likely covered with either water vapor or a thick haze, scientists announced today.

The exoplanet GJ 1214b, which orbits a star 40 light-years from Earth, offers astronomers a unique chance to study its atmosphere because it passes directly in front of its parent star from Earth's line of sight. That means that once an orbit, the star's light is filtered as it passes through the planet's atmosphere on its way to Earth, taking with it an imprint from the chemicals there. [Illustration of alien planet GJ 1214b]

"We're trying to get at: What's the main component of this planet's atmosphere?" said lead researcher Jacob Bean, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

GJ 1214b is called a super-Earth because it is larger than our home planet but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. It was first discovered in 2009 and has been studied ever since.

READ MORE: SPACE.com