The Exoplanets Of Trappist 1 Planetary System!
It seems like every couple of weeks the news headlines announce a new
“Earth-size” planet, making it look as if leaving earth and inhabiting
another planet is just around the corner. But actually, we are far from
that! In this video, we are going to talk about a planetary system that
made the world go crazy back when it first came out with how many
Earth-size planets it contains. We are talking about the planetary system
“TRAPPIST-1”!
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The story goes back to the year 1999 and begins with a star 40 light
years away in the constellation “Aquarius”, the star was discovered by
the astronomer “John Gizis” with the help of his colleagues. They gave
the star the hideous long name; “2MASS J23062928-0502285”!!!!!
The star was identified as an “ultra-cool” M-type dwarf star, that’s a type
of star, which as their name suggests, holds a very low temperature that
goes below 2700 °K (4400 °F). You might think that’s still very hot, but
believe me, for a star, that’s ”ultra-cool”, much cooler than our sun’s
surface temperature for example, that goes to nearly 6000 °K (
10000°F).
The star is very dim in the night sky, stargazers can not see it with the
naked eye, and in comparison to our sun, the star “2MASS
J23062928-0502285” is a dwarf star, with only 11% of the sun’s
diameter which makes it just a little bit bigger than Jupiter, and it’s also
much redder in colour than the sun. And because of its small size, the
star consumes fuel much slower than our own sun, that’s why when we
look at its age, we find it twice as old as the sun. Scientists have
estimated the star’s age to range between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years,
while our sun is only 4 and a half billion old.
The story progresses ‘till we reach the year 2008 when the construction
to build a new telescope called “TRAPPIST” was approved, the name is
a short for the “TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope”
and it’s a telescope funded by Belgian Fund for Scientific Research and
the Liège University in Belgium. The “TRAPPIST” telescope consists of 2
robotics telescopes, one located in the “La Silla Observatory” in Chile
and the other in the “Oukaïmeden Observatory” in Morocco. The main
purpose of building this telescope was to study bodies outside the solar
system, such as exoplanets and comets and asteroids and other small
bodies.
Now, we flash forward again to the year 2016 when astronomer “Michaël
Gillon”, alongside NASA astronomer “Susan M. Lederer” found 3
Earth-sized exoplanets around the star “2MASS J23062928-0502285”,
and in honor of the “TRAPPIST” telescope, astronomers gave the star a
newer neat and fancy name: “TRAPPIST-1”.
More observations in the following year using the NASA’s “Spitzer Space
Telescope” and other telescopes have discovered that the star
“TRAPPIST-1” actually hosts 7 Earth-sized exoplanets, not just 3! And
all 7 planets orbit the host star at a distance closer than Mercury is to our
Sun, that’s so ridiculously close that if you were to stand on one planet,
you’d be able to see the others as moons in the sky and even visually
bigger than our Moon!
Another thing astronomers noticed was how the planets may be tidally
locked to their host star just like how the moon is tidally locked to the
Earth. Being “tidally locked” means that a body orbits its host with only
one face always facing the host.
In the case of the planetary system “TRAPPIST-1”, all the planets in the
system may have one face facing the star at all times, leading to
permanent day time on one side and permanent night time on another
side, which in turn causes extreme temperature change and weather
patterns.
The discovery marked the first time ever for astronomers to spot THAT
MANY Earth-sized exoplanets around a single star! Further observations
and simulations have confirmed that the first 6 of the exoplanets may be
rocky ones, and the last planet could be of icy nature.
The discovery also marked for the first time 3 planets (“TRAPPIST-1e”
“TRAPPIST-1f” and “TRAPPIST-1g”) in the same planetary system
within the habitable zone. See, Finding an Earth-size planet is not
merely enough for it to be able to host life as we know it, the planet
needs to fall within what astronomers call “the habitable zone” and also
clear some criteria about its atmosphere.
The habitable zone is the zone that is not so far away nor so near to a
star, and at which a planet could orbit with just the right temperature for
life to evolve and for water to exist on it.
Original Author: Produced by Insane Curiosity and published on 01/07/2020 Source