NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has made the first-ever and long-anticipated detection of ice outside of our own solar system.

The frozen water was found within a debris disk circling HD 181327, a young, sun-like star that lies some 155 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Telescopium.

The ice is paired up with fine dust particles in the disk— forming what has been dubbed "itsy-bitsy dirty snowballs"—with more further out from the star, where it is colder.

Astronomers refer to what we would call ice as " water ice ," to distinguish it from other frozen molecules such as, for example, carbon dioxide in the form of "dry ice."

"Webb unambiguously detected not just water ice, but crystalline water ice," said paper author and astronomer Chen Xie of Johns Hopkins University i

See Full Page