Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2023 February 1
An illustration showing what it might be like to look from the 
seventh planet out from the star Trappist 1. A pillar of ice and rock
stands in a snow and ice covered landscape. A star surrounded by 
six planets hangs high in the sky.
Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

The Seventh World of Trappist-1
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Michael Carroll

Explanation: Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in 2016 using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) located at La Silla Observatory in Chile and later confirmed with telescope including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely all rocky and similar in size to Earth, and so compose one of the largest treasure troves of terrestrial planets ever detected around a single star. Because they orbit very close to their faint, tiny star they could also have regions where surface temperatures allow for the presence of ice or even liquid water, a key ingredient for life. Their tantalizing proximity to Earth makes them prime candidates for future telescopic explorations of the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. All seven exoplanets appear in the featured illustration, which imagines a view from the most distant known world of this system, TRAPPIST-1h, as having a rocky landscape covered in ice. Meanwhile, in the imagined background, one of the system's inner planets crosses in front of the dim, orange, nearly Jupiter-sized parent star.

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