TRAPPIST-1 Archives

Fish community on a reef offshore of Hawaii Island. CREDIT Lauren Freeman, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Moon, Press Release, TRAPPIST-1, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Moonlight-driven Biological Choruses In Hawaiian Coral Reefs

by Keith CowingMarch 20, 2024November 16, 2024

Editor’s note: Our world is more or less a double planet. Our large Moon creates significant tidal forces that drive much of the way that our oceans circulate and mix. […]

Combined transmission spectrum LHS1140b obtained with NIRISS SOSS on December 1st and 26th 2023 overlaid with HST observations (solid grey points; Edwards et al. 2021). The orange 2-envelope is the best TLS model dominated by facula. The dashed line is the predicted GCM model of the mini-Neptune scenario of Cadieux et al. (2024); this model is excluded at more than 5  (Cadieux et al., in prep). -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

Do Temperate Rocky Planets Around M Dwarfs have an Atmosphere?

by Keith CowingMarch 20, 2024

Detecting an atmosphere on nearby temperate planets is one of the most important scientific objectives of the Webb mission, an endeavour in practice limited to a handful of well-characterized planets: […]

Contour plot of surface temperature of the simulations, overlapping with arrows indicating the direction and magnitude of the surface wind.. a, b and c show the noAER simulations with pCO2 = 100, 3,000 and 20,000 Pa (pCH4 fixed at 0 Pa). d, e and f show the noAER simulations with CH4/CO2 = 0.02, 0.04 and 0.1 (pCO2 fixed at 20,000 Pa). g, h and i show the AER simulations with CH4/CO2 = 0.1, 0.125 and 0.175 (pCO2 fixed at 3,000 Pa). The liquid-water region, defined as the area with the surface temperature larger than 273 K and can maintain liquid water on the surface, is denoted with a white line. The wind structure of each simulation is also denoted, with the single jet structure denoted as "SJ" and the double jet structure denoted as "DJ". -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

3D Simulations Of TRAPPIST-1e With Varying CO2, CH4 And Haze Profiles

by Keith CowingMarch 12, 2024March 12, 2024

Using a 3D General Circulation Model, the Unified Model, we present results from simulations of a tidally-locked TRAPPIST-1e with varying carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4 gas concentrations, and their […]

Calculated dayside surface temperature matrices for some of the studied planets. Temperatures are presented in Kelvin. N = 1 was considered, since it is not expected that any of these planets have a very thick atmosphere. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Microbiology & Virology, Press Release, Proxima Centauri, Radiation, Space Weather & Heliophysics, TRAPPIST-1

How Habitable are M-dwarf Exoplanets?

by Keith CowingMarch 7, 2024March 7, 2024

How Habitable are M-dwarf Exoplanets? Modeling Surface Conditions and Exploring the Role of Melanins in the Survival of Aspergillus niger Spores Under Exoplanet-like Radiation

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

The Effect Of Lightning On The Atmospheric Chemistry Of Exoplanets And Potential Biosignatures

by Keith CowingFebruary 21, 2024February 21, 2024

Lightning has been suggested to play a role in triggering the occurrence of bio-ready chemical species. Future missions (PLATO, ARIEL, HWO, LIFE) and ground-based ELTs will investigate the atmospheres of […]

Planetary system architectures in comparison. Left panel: Semi-major axes in planetary systems in comparison. For Teegarden’s Star we show two possible configurations: the three planets as fit by our preferred model and a hypothetical configuration (labeled as Teegarden (h)) with the three planets, the candidate at 7.7 d (light blue) as well as a purely hypothetical planet between planets c and d (light gray). The size of the plot symbols in the left panel are scaled assuming a constant planet density using the masses from Table 4 and G.2. Right panel: Mutual Hill separations in planetary systems in comparison. The light blue line indicates the mutual Hill radius above which the orbital crossing time is larger than 109 orbits. -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Teegarden’s Star Revisited: A Nearby Planetary System With At Least Three Planets

by Keith CowingFebruary 5, 2024February 5, 2024

The two known planets in the planetary system of Teegarden’s Star are among the most Earth-like exoplanets currently known. Revisiting this nearby planetary system with two planets in the habitable […]

TRAPPIST-1 planets and the inner planets f our solar system. -- NASA

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

Airy Worlds Or Barren Rocks? On The Survivability Of Secondary Atmospheres Around The TRAPPIST-1 Planets

by Keith CowingJanuary 31, 2024January 31, 2024

In this work we aim to determine the atmospheric survivability of the TRAPPIST-1 planets by modelling the response of the upper atmosphere to incoming stellar high-energy radiation.

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Icy Worlds, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

Formation Of The TRAPPIST-1 System In A Dry Protoplanetary Disk

by Keith CowingJanuary 30, 2024January 30, 2024

A key feature of the Trappist-1 system is its monotonic decrease in bulk density with growing distance from the central star, which indicates an ice mass fraction that is zero […]

An equatorial slices showing the solar/stellar wind solution for Trappist-1e (left column) and for solar Carrington Rotation 1916 (right column). Color contours are of magnetic field strength (top) and number density (bottom). Also shown is the orbit of Trappist-1e at 0.028AU and the hypothetical orbits at 0.05AU and 0.1AU as solid black circles. Selected magnetic field lines are shown in grey. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

Heating of the Atmospheres of Short-orbit Exoplanets by Their Rapid Orbital Motion Through an Extreme Space Environment

by Keith CowingJanuary 29, 2024January 29, 2024

Exoplanets with short orbit period reside very close to their host stars. They transition very rapidly between different sectors of the circumstellar space environment along their orbit, leading to large […]

Left : combined transit light curves of the TRAPPIST-1 planets measured by Spitzer at 4.5 µm Source: open-source (arXiv) version of Ducrot et al. (2020). Right: Transit Timing Variations (TTVs, orange/red error bars) of TRAPPIST-1 planets compared to the best-fit 8-body dynamical model (blue/green lines). Source: open-source (arXiv) version of Agol et al. (2021). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

TRAPPIST-1 And Its Compact System Of Temperate Rocky Planets

by Keith CowingJanuary 24, 2024January 23, 2024

The TRAPPIST-1 system is comprised of seven Earth-sized rocky planets in small orbits around a Jupiter-sized ultracool dwarf star 12 parsec away.

TRAPPIST-1

Moonlight-driven Biological Choruses In Hawaiian Coral Reefs

Do Temperate Rocky Planets Around M Dwarfs have an Atmosphere?

3D Simulations Of TRAPPIST-1e With Varying CO2, CH4 And Haze Profiles

How Habitable are M-dwarf Exoplanets?

The Effect Of Lightning On The Atmospheric Chemistry Of Exoplanets And Potential Biosignatures

Teegarden’s Star Revisited: A Nearby Planetary System With At Least Three Planets

Airy Worlds Or Barren Rocks? On The Survivability Of Secondary Atmospheres Around The TRAPPIST-1 Planets

Formation Of The TRAPPIST-1 System In A Dry Protoplanetary Disk

Heating of the Atmospheres of Short-orbit Exoplanets by Their Rapid Orbital Motion Through an Extreme Space Environment

TRAPPIST-1 And Its Compact System Of Temperate Rocky Planets

Curiosity Mars Rover Discovers A Field Of Honeycomb Textures

Viking Science

Constraining The Lives And Times Of Exoplanets Through Evolutionary Bayesian Retrievals

Project Hephaistos — III. Characterizing Anomalous Infrared Sources Identified As Dyson-sphere Candidates

SCoRE: The Surface Composition Of Rocky Exoplanets