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JWST's first spectrum of a TRAPPIST-1 planet

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

#51
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 orbit…

It is funny to consider that most of the Milky Way is too dim to see. "Dark" matter. Of those 131 closest stars, only 22 are eye-visible. Only 6 are larger than Sol! WISE 0855−0714 is a mere 7.4 light years away and wasn't discovered until we started putting infrared telescopes in orbit.

Heck, TRAPPIST-1 itself isn't eye-visible. It's only slightly bigger than Jupiter! But these systems are hugely overrepresented in exoplanet surveys-- since we've only been hunting for exoplanets for a decade or so via the transit method, most of them have been found orbiting red dwarfs: the host star is so dim that transits take a big chunk out of their light curve, and the planets huddled up close to the star orbit so quickly that you can get the required three transits in a mere ten years of observation time.

It's a safe bet that there are gas giants like Neptune out there, but by the transit method it would take four centuries to find them! We invented the "hot Jupiter" category after Kepler launched, without nothing that we won't ever find "normal" gas giants without interstellar probes or space telescopes 10 km across.

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

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The habitable zone is very close to the star; this results in a high probability of the planet being tidally locked and a high probability of being affected by solar flares.

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…

super interesting. it also seems like there are tons of tidally locked planets.

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The habitable zone is very close to the star; this results in a high probability of the planet being tidally locked and a high probability of being affected by solar flares.

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…

wouldn't this lead to basically having constant hurricane strength winds in the "temperate" zone though

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

#56
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 orbit…

Thanks, I learned a few things from these facts.

I also always get confused with red dwarfs and red giants, about time I educated myself:

Red dwarfs are main sequence (i.e. in the prime of their life) stars that are small, and reddish.

Red giants are old stars, and what will become of our Sun.

This chart helped: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution#/media/Fil...

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

#57
I've always wondered, what determines which planet or solar system to observe? I guess I'd like to think we have a list of solar systems that are most likely to hold life and simply go down it from most likely to least likely but it surely can't be that reductive.

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

#58
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Red dwarf systems are the typical extrasolar system though. The vast majority of stars in this galaxy are red dwarfs.

Yeah but there are about 20 billion G and K type stars in the Milky Way so it's not that rare.

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

#59
post #33

So they are confident it is just a dumb rock, and it's time to move onto another planet. Good but very boring news.

A planet is hardly "just a dumb rock"

Don’t bother. This guy doesn’t respond to anything that contradicts him.

Would be cool to have a dashboard of some sort that provided “probability this HN user will respond when called out for speaking from their behind”.

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

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The habitable zone is very close to the star; this results in a high probability of the planet being tidally locked and a high probability of being affected by solar flares.

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…

Such a planet would likely suffer from extreme weather to a level which would make the planet incompatible with the life forms which thrive on Earth.
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