Exoplanets discovery: NASA's Kepler provides more information about TRAPPIST-1

Image credit: NASA

New Delhi: NASA's Kepler mission has provided more information on the ultra-cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1, that hosts seven potentially habitable Earth-size planets discovered Spitzer Space Telescope in combination with ground-based telescopes.

Since December 2016, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has also been observing this star, TRAPPIST-1, and now its seems that that data are freely available to the scientific community.

During the period of December 15, 2016 to March 4, the Kepler spacecraft, operating as the K2 mission, collected data on the star's minuscule changes in brightness due to transiting planets.

Scientists believe the release of the raw, uncalibrated data collected will aid astronomers in preparing proposals due this month to use telescopes on Earth next winter to further investigate TRAPPIST-1.

"Scientists and enthusiasts around the world are invested in learning everything they can about these Earth-size worlds," said Geert Barentsen, K2 research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. "Providing the K2 raw data as quickly as possible was a priority to give investigators an early look so they could best define their follow-up research plans. We're thrilled that this will also allow the public to witness the process of discovery."

By late May, the routine processing of the data will be completed and the fully calibrated data will be made available at the public archive.

Kepler monitored TRAPPIST-1 for 74 days, a period known as K2 Campaign 12. During Campaign 12, a cosmic ray event reset the spacecraft's onboard software causing a five-day break in science data collection.

This is the longest, nearly continuous set of observations of TRAPPIST-1 yet, and provides researchers with an opportunity to further study the gravitational interaction between the seven planets, and search for planets that may remain undiscovered in the system.

The added refinements to the previous measurements of the known planets and any additional planets that may be discovered in the K2 data will help astronomers plan for follow-up studies of the neighboring TRAPPIST-1 worlds using NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

On February 22, NASA announced its big discovery of seven Earth-like planets around a TRAPPIST-1, with all of them possesing the characteristics of liquid water, which is the key to life.