Researchers have made ground-based observations of the atmosphere of a cooling stellar white dwarf point, the burnt out remains of a star, which was once like ours.

As per the observations, the researchers said that one of this dying solar system's asteroids was having water ice in abundance. Now, the team of researchers from UK and Germany said that water oceans on earthlike planets are likely ever-present.

Using the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands, the team of astronomers made the observations. The study has given credence to the idea that asteroids may have provided water to a number of terrestrial mass planets that are at habitable distances from their stars.

The researchers said that they have found massive amount of hydrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere of the white dwarf SDSS J1242+5226. It is located some 530 light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major.

The researchers said that an asteroid measuring around 900 km in diameter entered into the upper atmosphere of the white dwarf. The paper's second author Boris Gaensicke, an astronomer at the University of Warwick, said, "We [also] looked at a larger set of white dwarfs and found strong evidence that over their long lifetimes many of them [were] hit by water-rich asteroids or comets. So, there seems to be no shortage of water carriers that could deliver oceans to other earthlike planets".

However, then also it has been wondered how oceans actually have such a vast amount of water. In fact, they even question whether the oceans' water has come from asteroids and comets. Majority of the researchers have opted the second option, but it is not sure for now as to which planetary body played the role of delivering earth's own water.