How did you come to create such a strange arrangement of planets? (Image credit: Sean Raymond SeanRaymond ()) Raymond writes about the interface of science and fiction at. When a solar system forms, there’s no reason planets should preferentially occur in the habitable zone, and the TRAPPIST-1 system is unusual in having as many as three planets there.īut from a theoretical perspective, is there an upper limit to how many planets can be squeezed into the Goldilocks zone? That’s a question astrophysicist Sean Raymond addressed on his blog (opens in new tab). Astronomers are understandably keen to learn more about the Trappist-1 system, and it’s one of the planned targets for the James Webb Space Telescope. It would take the form of atmospheric water vapour on planets closer to the star, or ice on the most distant of them. It’s possible that water is present on all seven planets, though only in a liquid state on the three inside the habitable zone. Trappist-1 is remarkable in having seven known rocky planets, three of them lying within the star’s Goldilocks zone, according to NASA. At around 40 light-years, it’s further away than Proxima but still a close neighbour in cosmic terms. This is so small and dim that its habitable zone is located at very close range, but Proxima B - which whizzes around the star once every 11 days - is safely inside it, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) (opens in new tab).Īnother much-studied red dwarf is Trappist-1. That happened in 2016 in the case of Proxima B, which orbits the sun’s nearest neighbour in space - the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, just over 4 light-years away. But it’s always exciting when one is found within its parent star’s Goldilocks zone.

The discovery of new exoplanets orbiting distant stars has become almost commonplace. At the inner edge is Venus (opens in new tab) - a boiling hot planet, thanks both to its proximity to the sun and its super-thick atmosphere, according to NASA (opens in new tab). Mars (opens in new tab), which had plenty of water in the past but is a barren desert today, is right on its outer edge. The Earth - a very watery planet that’s teeming with life - is situated comfortably inside the habitable zone.

So far, the results agree with what we know from observations. Theoreticians have worked out where its Goldilocks zone ought to be, by estimating the surface temperature of a planet based on the amount of solar heating it receives. Our own solar system is the most studied of all planetary systems. – 7 solar system worlds where the weather is crazy – What does the edge of the solar system look like? – Why do the planets in the solar system orbit on the same plane?