Scientist Confirmed Orbital Details of Trappist-1

TRAPPIST-1 SYSTEM

    NASA Scientists using Kepler Space Telescope identified a regular pattern around the orbits of planet Trappist-1 and they got solid details about their outer orbit.
      Trappist-1 is only eight percent of mass of our sun, making it cooler and less luminous star. It has Eight planets which orbits around, Three of which are revolving in their Star's Habitable zone, the far distance from the star reasons for the presence of cloud on the surface of rocky planet. This TRAPPIST System is located about 40-light years away from the Aquarius Constellation. This planets and Star is estimated to be between 3 billion to 8 billion years old.This discovery has been possible due to the collaboration and observation between NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Transisting Planets and Planetesimal Small Telescope in Chile and Ground-Based Telescope.

KEPLER SPACE TELESCOPE

    Astronomers from the University of Washington have used data from the Kepler Spacecraft to confirm that TRAPPIST-1h orbits its star every 19 days. At Six million miles from its cool dwarf star. TRAPPIST is located beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone and likely too cold for life as we know it. The amount of energy of planet h receives from its star is comparable to what the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, gets from our Sun.

Data provided by the Spitzer Telescope, the Trappist team recognized a mathematical pattern i  the frequency at which each of the six innermost planet orbit their star. This complex but predictable pattern called orbital resonance, occurs when planets exert  a  regular, periodic gravitational tug on each other as they orbit the star.

SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE

Using the Spitzer Telescope data, the team calculated the orbital velocity, orbital period of the planet h before the observation of Kepler. The team calculated six possible resonant periods for planet h that would not disrupt the stability of the system, but only one was not ruled out by additional data. The other five possibilities could have been observed in the Spitzer and ground-based data collected by the TRAPPIST team.

All of this, Luger said, "indicates that these orbital relationships were forged early in the life of the TRAPPIST-1 system, during the planet formation process". The resonant structure is no coincidence, and points to an interesting dynamical history in which the planets likely migrated inward in lock-step, said Luger. This makes the system a great laboratory for planet formation and migration theories.

       The Kepler spacecraft started to collect data about TRAPPIST-1 from 15 December 2016 to 4 March 2016 as the part of Second mission, K2. On March 8 the data released for the detailed studies and they predicted the 19-day orbital period.

       TRAPPIST-1 is a seven planet chain of resonances established a record among known planetary systems,  the previous holders being the systems Kepler-80 and Kepler-223 each with four resonant planets.

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

The TRAPPIST-1 system was first discovered in 2016 by the TRAPPIST collaboration, and was thought to have just three planets at that time. Additional planets were found with Spitzer and ground-based telescopes. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will be able to probe potential atmospheres in further detail.