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There Would at Least Be a Gorgeous View
If the TRAPPIST-1 system is habitable to life, we’re looking at one of the most futuristic vacation destinations around (if humans could even feasibly travel 39 light years away in a long weekend). The planets’ nearness to the central star means it would appear three times as large as our sun. Because they’re all so close together, we’d see the other planets passing across the sky in front of the sun. That’s a whole lot more than just the view of the moon we have now.
The dwarf star isn’t at the end of its life-cycle, either. It’s not a dim, cold white dwarf. Rather, TRAPPIST-1 is a gorgeous salmon color which paints the entire sky in a perpetual sunset. Whatever lives on those planets lives in the Golden Hour for most of the day.
Making the Discovery
Michaël Gillon and his team have had their eye on TRAPPIST-1 since 2015. It wasn’t until recently, though that they discovered there were planets orbiting around this star.
The star was named after the telescope they used to make the discovery – the European Southern Observatory’s Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST). Watching from their observatory in Chile, the scientists noticed dips in the star’s brightness which occurred in regular intervals. They soon discovered this was caused by planets crossing between the star and Earth. Scientists published these findings last May, stating they found three rocky bodies: TRAPPIST-1b, -1c and -1d – but that wasn’t all.
