It was the first interstellar weather report of its kind outside our solar system, and a West Virginia University-trained physicist helped lead the three NASA teams that pulled it off.

Dr. Jeremy Richardsons work with the high-tech Spitizer Space Telescope revealed scorching, dark and windy conditions on two planets light-years away from Earth.

It was the first examination ever of the atmospheres of planets rotating about stars other than our own Sun, said Richardson, of NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.and it was significant, the 1997 WVU physics graduate saidfor what it didnt reveal: water.

The teams findings were published this week (Feb. 22) in the journal Nature.

Water is the ingredient believed to be part of the universal recipe for life on other planets, and the Goddard team and two others from NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology have spent the past two years seeing what they could with the aid of the high-tech telescope.

The first planet, known as HD 209458b, has a surface temperature of about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and circles a star similar to our Sun located about 150 light-years away. The second, HD 189733b, is 62 light-years away in its orbit around a reddish star slightly smaller than our sun.

The pair is part of a grouping of planets known asextrasolarplanets.

Both are swaddled in thick clouds of dust, but that doesnt mean the water isnt there, Richardson told The New York Times Wednesday in a conference call from Goddard that included members of all three teams.

The water could still be there,he said.We just cant see it.

Richardson also identified new types of hydrocarbon molecules in the planetsclouds that will most likely show up in observations of other extrasolar worlds.

His NASA colleague Mark Swain called the findings adress rehearsalin the search for life in outer space.

From WVU , Richardson blasted off for the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he earned a doctorate in physics in 1997.

The Barrackville, Marion County native, was active in the Honors Program at WVU and considers retired professor and Honors Program Director Bill Collins as one of his mentors, along with current WVU physics professors Marty Ferer and Mark Koepke.