Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Two mercurylikes at TRAPPIST

I was at Nederland yesterday; the library had an exhibit on-loan from NASA, aimed at the kids. As a not-kid, I can report that the exhibit was a fine one. If it seemed incomplete, most of that is from the pace of discovery being so swift.

Venus is, to some, our very own exoplanet. Courtesy (now) the James Webb: Venuslikes should be visible elsewhere, through the scattering their large atmospheres and cloud-decks would force. We appear to be searching the Venus belts in earnest. Like LP 890-9; but we're here for TRAPPIST 1.

The atmo is detectable through repeated transits; temperature, through when they revolve furthest from the stellar disc. The closer-planets have repeated those transits more-often. (Also, the warmer worlds shine brighter; although being closer they might be canceled by the star's brightness.) Accordingly, the data is coming to us from the inside-out.

One Nederland diagram had insolation against stellar-temperature; Venus held the 1.9 S left-hand edge, TRAPPIST 1-b and -c apparently being too hot for the graph. 1-b lately got ruled a supermercury but, most should have expected it would be. Now it appears 1-c is airless too.

1-d and 1-e were on the Ned chart so - they might be JWST's next target. 1-d is closer to Mars' radius and density, and gets more light than Earth gets; I've every expectation this one is airless too. I guess we'll need to await 1-e.

UPDATE 6/22: Paul Gilster weighs in. LHS 3844 and GJ 1252 are similar: their planets have been marked as airless too. That TRAPPIST is a flarestar may have something to do with its planets' airlessness. Proxima b (and d) would be in the same boat I think.

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