Hubble Makes First Measurements of Earth-Sized Exoplanet Atmospheres

  • Released Wednesday, July 20, 2016
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Music credit: "Feels Good" by Louise Dowd and Stephen William Cornish, Atmosphere Music Ltd, Killer Tracks Production Music

On May 4th, 2016, the Hubble Space Telescope made the first spectroscopic measurements of two of the three known Earth-sized exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system just 40 light-years away. Now the results are in: a thick, puffy, hydrogen-helium atmosphere is likely ruled out from the possible range of atmospheres for these two planets.

Additional visuals from the European Southern Observatory can be downloaded here: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1615/E

Animation - Artist concept of the double-transit Hubble observed on May 4, 2016, when planets TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c passed across the disk of their host star just minutes apart.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-telescope-makes-first-atmospheric-study-of-earth-sized-exoplanets

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Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:48 PM EDT.

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Related papers

http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01103

http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01103