                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2023 February 1
   An illustration showing what it might be like to look from the seventh
   planet out from the star Trappist 1. A pillar of ice and rock stands in
     a snow and ice covered landscape. A star surrounded by six planets
     hangs high in the sky. Please see the explanation for more detailed
                                information.

                       The Seventh World of Trappist-1
              Illustration Credit & Copyright: Michael Carroll

   Explanation: Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A
   mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in
   2016 using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope
   (TRAPPIST) located in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and later
   confirmed with telescope including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The
   TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely all rocky and similar in size to Earth,
   and so compose one of the largest treasure troves of terrestrial
   planets ever detected around a single star. Because they orbit very
   close to their faint, tiny star they could also have regions where
   surface temperatures allow for the presence of ice or even liquid
   water, a key ingredient for life. Their tantalizing proximity to Earth
   makes them prime candidates for future telescopic explorations of the
   atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. All seven exoplanets
   appear in the featured illustration, which imagines a view from the
   most distant known world of this system, TRAPPIST-1h, as having a rocky
   landscape covered in ice. Meanwhile, in the imagined background, one of
   the system's inner planets crosses in front of the dim, orange, nearly
   Jupiter-sized parent star.

    Astrophysicists: Browse 3,000+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code
                                   Library
                       Tomorrow's picture: open space
     __________________________________________________________________

       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
                NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

