The discovery, reported today in Nature, is the first evidence supporting the hypothesis that these very low-mass and low-temperature stars should have Earth-sized or smaller planets orbiting them.
The planets, which are the size of Venus and Earth, are currently the best places to look for life outside our solar system, said the team of researchers led by astronomer Michaël Gillon, from the University of Liege in Belgium.
“Systems around these tiny stars are the only places where we can detect life on an Earth-sized exoplanet with our current technology,” Gillon said. “So if we want to find life elsewhere in the universe, this is where we should start to look.”
The planets were found almost by accident, as an international group of astronomers were conducting a test survey of an ultra-cool dwarf star labelled TRAPPIST-1, which lies in the constellation of Aquarius.
“We were preparing a much more ambitious project that will start this year, which will use a bigger telescope operating from Chile, and this prototype was meant to assess the feasibility of the project, but it worked so well that it detected an amazing system around a nearby ultra-cool dwarf,” Gillon said.
Planets could be habitable
The star, TRAPPIST-1, is about the size of Jupiter but is one thousand times dimmer than our Sun and shines in the much cooler infrared part of the light spectrum.
Orbiting it are three planets; two orbiting within 1.1 to 1.5 per cent of the distance between the Earth and the Sun and passing in front of the star every one to two days.
“Because the star is so faint, so small and cold, it emits much less photons so these planets should have temperatures which are quite similar to Venus,” Gillon said.
A third planet was found further out from the star but its orbit is less well-characterised, with researchers estimating that it passes in front of the star anywhere from every four to 72 days.
This distance puts the third planet in the middle of the so-called “Goldilocks Zone” of habitability, which means it could have a temperature range similar to that found on Earth, Gillon said.
Discovery ‘pushes limits’ of equipment
While astronomical theory suggests these ultra-cool, low mass stars would have Earth-sized planets orbiting them, astronomer Simon O’Toole from the Australian Astronomical Observatory said finding them was far from easy.
“That’s one of the neat parts of the project; that they basically stare at all the stars like this for as long as they can, then trying to find the transits, the dimming in brightness, and then try to find it periodically,” O’Toole, who was not involved in the study, said.
The researchers used a small 60-centimeter telescope to monitor the brightness of TRAPPIST-1 every 1.2 minutes for 245 hours over 62 nights.
The small telescope picked up the periodic dimming of the star, which suggested planets were passing in front of it and blocking some of its light.
The research team then used three much larger telescopes in India, Chile and Hawaii to confirm that these were indeed planets orbiting the star.
“It’s a phenomenal measurement … it’s really, really challenging, they’re pushing the limits of their equipment,” O’Toole said.
Read more at Discovery News
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