The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered that a distant world discovered a few years ago may be an “eyeball” planet with an iris-like ocean surrounded by a sea of ​​solid ice, making it a potentially habitable world candidate.

The exoplanet, named LHS-1140b, was first discovered in 2017. It was initially thought to be a “mini-Neptune” orbiting a dense mixture of water, methane and ammonia. However, the new findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available on the preprint server. arXivsuggests the planet is icier and wetter than scientists thought, meaning it could support life.

“Of all the temperate exoplanets currently known, LHS-1140b may one day be our best chance to indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world outside our solar system,” first author Charles Cadier, an astrophysicist at the University of Montreal, said in a statement. “This would be a significant milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.”

Located 50 light-years from Earth, LHS-1140b is about 1.73 times wider than our planet and 5.6 times its mass. It is tidally connected to its parent star. This means it orbits its star at the same speed as it does without casting its molten eye 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) into the cosmic fire. The planet, in close orbit, lasts a year, just under 25 Earth days.

If LHS-1140b were a main-sequence star like the Sun, such a distant orbit would boil off its oceans, making it completely uninhabitable. But because it is a cooler red dwarf, such a short distance puts the planet right in the middle of the “Goldilocks zone” – the ideal distance from its star for liquid water to exist on the planet.

To study the exoplanet, the researchers used JWST’s Near Infrared Camera and Slitless Spectrograph, which allows the telescope to estimate the planet’s composition as light from its star passes through the planet’s hypothetical atmosphere and reaches Earth.

Looking at the wavelengths of light absorbed, astronomers noticed signatures of nitrogen, a major component of Earth’s atmosphere. Separate calculations also suggested that the planet is not dense enough to be made of rocks. Taken together, these results appear to favor a rocky or mini-Neptunian world, a world in a sea of ​​ice.

Even though much of the planet is frozen, the researchers noted that the Iris side could reach temperatures of 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) on its surface — warm enough to create a habitable pool for marine life on the frozen world.

“Finding an Earth-like atmosphere on a temperate planet pushes the boundaries of Webb’s capabilities; it is possible; we just need a lot of time to observe it,” said co-author René Doyon, a physicist at the University of Montreal. “The current suggestion of a nitrogen-rich atmosphere needs to be confirmed with additional data. We need at least another year of observations to confirm that LHS 1140b has an atmosphere, and probably two to three more years to detect carbon dioxide.”