Life orbiting TRAPPIST-1? | Three Potentially Habitable Earth-Like Planets!
2Let's talk planets!
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Discovered by the European Southern Observatory TRAPPIST telescope in Chile, these 3 newly discovered potentially habitable Earth-size Planets suggest very low-mass and low-temperature stars should have Earth-sized or smaller planets orbiting them.
Led by astronomer Michaël Gillon, the team of researchers from the University of Liege in Belgium believe the planets are currently the best places, outside of our Solar System, to look for life!
“Systems around these tiny stars are the only places where we can detect life on an Earth-sized exoplanet with our current technology,” Gillon said. “So if we want to find life elsewhere in the universe, this is where we should start to look.”
The planets were discovered, almost by accident, by an international group of astronomers, who were conducting a test in the constellation of Aquarius for the survey of the ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, which lies in the constellation of Aquarius.
“We were preparing a much more ambitious project that will start this year, which will use a bigger telescope operating from Chile, and this prototype was meant to assess the feasibility of the project, but it worked so well that it detected an amazing system around a nearby ultra-cool dwarf,” Gillon said.
TRAPPIST-1 is about the size of Jupiter but is one thousand times dimmer than our Sun. (At the time of filming, it was said to be 2000 times dimmer) TRAPPIST-1 shines in the much cooler infrared part of the light spectrum.
Three planets are orbiting it; two of which orbit within 1.1 to 1.5 per cent of the distance between the Earth and the Sun and pass in front of TRAPPIST-1 every one to two days!
“Because the star is so faint, so small and cold, it emits much less photons so these planets should have temperatures which are quite similar to Venus,” Gillon said.
Found further out from the star, a third, more mysterious planet orbits. Researchers estimate that it passes in front of the star anywhere from every four to 72 days.
The third planet is slap-bang in the middle of the so-called “Goldilocks Zone” of habitability, which means it could have a temperature range similar to that found on Earth, Gillon said.
Astronomer Simon O’Toole from the Australian Astronomical Observatory said finding this system of possible habitable planets and star, was far from easy.
Over 245 hours, TRAPPIST-1 was observed by a 60-centimeter telescope to monitor the change in brightness of the star, in order to record the periodic dimming that was caused by the Earth-size planets passing in front.
With the evidence of dimming, the research team then used three much larger telescopes in India, Chile and Hawaii to confirm that these were indeed planets orbiting the star. - Which they were!
A more in depth study of the composition and atmosphere of the planets using the Himalayan Chandra 2-meter Telescope in India, is being conducted - as well as assistance by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018.
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