Re:Nearby "Super Earth" May Have Oceans, Thick Atmosphere
by hugh_ on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @05:50PM
(#999927)
They haven't yet done spectroscopy on it. It's mentioned as a future possibility, but right now it's not feasible to do spectroscopy on an exoplanetary atmosphere -- the signal-to-noise you get when you try to measure something as tiny as the effect of a transiting planet's atmosphere on the spectrum of a star is too damn small to be measured with today's instruments. (I just happen to have heard a talk on this very subject a few weeks ago).
Maybe in a few decades, though.