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JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

phys.org

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Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#41

Post by standardly »

api wrote: post #38
standardly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tidally locked planet would be neat if civilization could exist there. One side would be constantly hot, and the other would be frozen, but there would exist a temperate climate zone in a longitudinal ring connecting the poles. Almost like a ring planet from Halo. I remember an interesting astrobotany paper hypothesizing that if plants were to evolve on a red dwarf planet, there would be selective pressure for them…

You could also put solar up along the edge and even on the hot side and have tons of energy with no need for storage. It’d be like a poor man’s Dyson sphere.

Neat idea. Imagine getting solar/thermal energy from one half of the planet, and housing supercomputers and genetic databanks on the cold side, with population centers living in the temperate ring.

Or, the rich people could live in the temperate zone while the poor people choose between burning and freezing. Brb, writing a dystopian sci-fi.

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#42

Post by none_to_remain »

wlesieutre wrote: post #25
rburkej wrote: post #3

NGL, my first thought was a planet full of beer and cheese.

If anyone's curious, the name comes from planets around the star having been discovered using the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST

The name comes from Trappist beer. Belgian university

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#43

Post by wlesieutre »

none_to_remain wrote: post #42
wlesieutre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone's curious, the name comes from planets around the star having been discovered using the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST

The name comes from Trappist beer. Belgian university

The telescope's name comes from that, then the star's name from the telescope

See also: SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECULOOS

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#44

Post by dylan604 »

somenameforme wrote: post #12
echelon wrote: post #2

> cloud-free, hydrogen-rich atmospheres were ruled out with high confidence. This means that there appears to be no clear, extended atmosphere around TRAPPIST-1 b I will never not be amazed that we can read the atmospheric spectra of exoplanets.

Spectroscopy. [1] The most amazing thing about it is how simple it really is. Each element has a unique absorption/emission scheme for 'light' / electromagnetic radiation. So light radiated from a body will have tell tale missing segments when broken down into its spectrum, absorbed by the atmosphere it passed through. Think about how light passed through a prism splits from white light into its rainbow colored compo…

>The most amazing thing about it is how simple it really is

what gets me isn't the lack of complexity, but the lack of light. holding a prism to capture the sun's light or a flash light or whatever is simple since there's so much of it. even in telescopes, stars are mere pixels.

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#45

Post by dylan604 »

ck2 wrote: post #14

Now I can't wait for European Extremely Large Telescope with several times the resolution (also the space Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope) btw PBS Nova has an awesome episode on JWST, how hard it was to get built and how it almost didn't get built because massively over budget ($10 Billion!) https://www.pbs.org/video/ultimate-space-telescope-gunryt/ This is kind of a "part 2" follow-up after it was launched and…

I started watching the Nova episode. I didn't realize the timing of the testing done in Houston during hurricane Harvey. As if the stress on getting JWST built wasn't enough, but now it's in the path of a massive hurricane that parked itself over the area dropping 40"+ of rain.

Edit: just to add that I found the segment on the alignment process of the 18 mirrors an interesting puzzle. Once you've found all of the pieces, you still have to decide what mirror each part of image represents. I've aligned my telescope mirror's primary/secondary mirrors on terra firma, but you at least have a bit of a feel for how much you're adjusting. Doing that remotely from 1M miles away, just makes it that much cooler

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#46

Post by ramraj07 »

baja_blast wrote: post #13
ramraj07 wrote: post #8

Given how much we know now about how inhospitable red dwarf star systems are, why are we continuing to focus on planets in such systems instead of planets in sun like stars?

because you need 3 transits for a positive detection of a exoplanet. And given that the habitable planet around a sun like star is anything from 250 - 700 days the observation time is too expensive so they focus on red dwarfs instead. I also find it pretty annoying as well, especially when science communicators try and extrapolate observations on red dwarfs on what is typical extrasolar system.

Fair. Physics so unfair.

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#47

Post by sbierwagen »

seventytwo wrote: post #36

Does this technique only work with systems that are edge-on so that the star light passes through the exoplanet atmosphere? Or can this work with reflected star light for systems that have orbits that face us?

Edge only. Fortunately, most of the exoplanets we know of were discovered by that exact method (by space telescopes that stared at a patch of stars for months at a time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_space_telescope ) so it's just a matter of working down that list.

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#48

Post by hindsightbias »

baja_blast wrote: post #13
ramraj07 wrote: post #8

Given how much we know now about how inhospitable red dwarf star systems are, why are we continuing to focus on planets in such systems instead of planets in sun like stars?

because you need 3 transits for a positive detection of a exoplanet. And given that the habitable planet around a sun like star is anything from 250 - 700 days the observation time is too expensive so they focus on red dwarfs instead. I also find it pretty annoying as well, especially when science communicators try and extrapolate observations on red dwarfs on what is typical extrasolar system.

small steps

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#49

Post by BMc2020 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #39
ramraj07 wrote: post #8

Given how much we know now about how inhospitable red dwarf star systems are, why are we continuing to focus on planets in such systems instead of planets in sun like stars?

Most stars are red dwarfs. Of the 131 stars and sub-stellar objects within 20 light years of the Earth, 101 are red or brown dwarfs. JWST/NIRISS has limited resolution, it's not going to be shooting spectra of exoplanet atmospheres of systems 50,000 light years away. They're just measuring every exoplanet system.

Fun facts about red dwarfs*

If you look up on a dark night, you can see 5 to 10 thousand stars. For every star you see there are 8 red dwarves. Not one of them is visible to the naked eye.

No red dwarf has died of old age yet. They live trillions of years and the universe isn't old enough.

Proxima Centauri might not be part of the centauri system. It's orbit is so long (80,000 years) that we can't tell if it is orbiting Alpha and Beta or just drifting by.

Since they are flare stars (suddenly increase 10 - 50 percent in brightness), there were a few minutes in 2015 where if you knew where to look you could see it.

The book (and netflix show) the three body problem is about aliens from the centauri star system.

w/apologies to JRR Tolkein, who said the correct word is dwarves.

* this is all from memory, might want to verify it.

Re: JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

#50

Post by shagie »

standardly wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also put solar up along the edge and even on the hot side and have tons of energy with no need for storage. It’d be like a poor man’s Dyson sphere.

Neat idea. Imagine getting solar/thermal energy from one half of the planet, and housing supercomputers and genetic databanks on the cold side, with population centers living in the temperate ring. Or, the rich people could live in the temperate zone while the poor people choose between burning and freezing. Brb, writing a dystopian sci-fi.

> Brb, writing a dystopian sci-fi.

Make sure to give Proxima by Baxter a read.

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