Novel technique boosts hunt for water on planets around other stars

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-astronomers-finetune-life-planets.html

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers have been able to detect the tell-tale spectral fingerprint of water molecules in the atmosphere of a planet in orbit around another star (HD 189733b). The discovery endorses a new technique that will let astronomers efficiently search for water on hundreds of worlds without the need for space-based telescopes. Dr Jayne Birkby of Leiden University will present the new result on Friday 5 July at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews, Scotland

Paper on arXiv :
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1133

It's the same team, technique and instrument (CRIRES) than in previous detections of CO in planets like tau bootis and HD209458b.

Maybe you can merge threads.

Aren't those results about using the CO line to detect the planetary motion?

You are right, Sirius. But those results seem to be in very separately threads, so difficult for joining them, i suppose.

Very interesting, the detection of water instead of CO, and the possibility of detect other molecules, and the spectrograph IGRINS at McDonald, that could be use to this kind of studies.

I hope they could be able of detecting Alpha Centauri planet, in the next future.