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Scientists have announced that they might have found water clouds beyond the solar system for the first time.

The discovery was made on a brown dwarf, a gas giant planet that failed to become a star, 7.3 light-years from Earth.

If true, the sighting would be an important step to finding habitable planets like our own in the future.

Astronomers in Washington DC have found the first ever evidence for water clouds beyond the solar system. The discovery was made on a 'failed star' (artist's impression shown) 7.3 light-years from Earth. The object is a brown dwarf called WISE J0855-0714 that is up to 10 times the mass of Jupiter

The finding was announced by a team led by Dr Jacqueline Faherty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.

The object in question is the coldest brown dwarf ever found, WISE J0855-0714, with a temperature between -48 and -13°C (-55 and 8°F).

To make the discovery, Dr Faherty combined 151 near-infrared images of the world using the 6.5-metre (21 feet) Magellan Baade telescope in Chile.

This revealed that the colour of the gas giant matches the predicted models of a brown dwarf with clouds of water ice in its atmosphere.

While water vapour has been spotted in exoplanets before, this is the first time water clouds have been spotted.

It's thought that as much as half of the planet is obscured by clouds, making it a partly cloudy world like Earth.

Even in our own solar system, the only water clouds known of are on Earth and Mars; for the giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, they are too cold and ammonia ice clouds cover suspected water clouds below.

And finding a partly cloudy world is important, as aside from Earth most other planets with clouds we know of such as Venus and Jupiter are blanketed in clouds, with no apparent break to the surface.

WISE J0855-0714 is one of the closest 'stars' to Earth at just 7.3 light-years away. The year when each system was determined is listed in brackets under each object. WISE J0855-0714 is also the coldest brown dwarf ever found, with a temperature between -48 and -13°C (-55 and 8°F)

'I've been obsessed with this object since its discovery,' Dr Faherty said in Science.

'I went to battle at the telescope to try and get this detection.

'I wanted to put war paint under my eyes and wear a bandanna, because I knew this was not going to be an easy thing to do.

'At the telescope, I've never been so nervous. I've never wanted clear conditions so badly.'

Ultimately, after three nights of observations, Dr Faherty made the groundbreaking discovery.

Follow-up studies from observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2018, will be used to confirm the findings.