The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) is the corporate name for a pair of Belgian optic robotic telescopes. TRAPPIST–South, which is situated high in the Chilean mountains at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory, came online in 2010, and TRAPPIST–North situated at the Oukaïmeden Observatory in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, came online in 2016.
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👉 TRAPPIST in the context of ASTELCO
The company ASTELCO Systems is a manufacturer of telescopes, telescope control systems, domes/enclosures and related technology for professional astronomical research or public use. ASTELCO is located in Sauerlach near Munich and was founded in 2004.
The company built the telescope and mount of the TRAPPIST Telescopes, famous for the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system, a red dwarf with seven terrestrial planets. The company also built the telescopes and mounts for the SPECULOOS Southern and Northern Observatory, which are searching for terrestrial planets around ultracool dwarfs and brown dwarfs in the habitable zone. Other projects include the 60 cm Robotic Telescope BOOTES-5 in Mexico, the COATLI robotic 50 cm telescope in Sierra San Pedro Mártir and the prototype for ESO VLT Laser Guide Star Telescope.
In this Dossier
TRAPPIST in the context of SPECULOOS
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) is a project consisting of SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and SPECULOOS Northern Observatory (SNO) at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife.
The SSO consists of four Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes of 1-metre primary aperture, made by ASTELCO. Each telescope is equipped with a NTM-1000 robotic mount and will search for Earth-sized exoplanets around 1000 ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs. As of June 2019, the SNO consists of one telescope, but more might be added in the future with up to three telescopes for SNO. SPECULOOS is complemented by SAINT-EX and TRAPPIST.
TRAPPIST in the context of TRAPPIST-1
TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool red dwarf star with seven known planets. It lies in the constellation Aquarius approximately 40.66 light-years away from Earth, and it has a surface temperature of about 2,566 K (2,290 °C; 4,160 °F). Its radius is slightly larger than Jupiter's and it has a mass of about 9% of the Sun. It is estimated to be 7.6 billion years old, making it older than the Solar System. The discovery of the star was first published in 2000.
Observations in 2016 from TRAPPIST–South (Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope project) at La Silla Observatory in Chile and other telescopes led to the discovery of two terrestrial planets in orbit around TRAPPIST-1. In 2017, further analysis of the original observations identified five more terrestrial planets. The seven planets take between 1.5 and 19 days to orbit the star in circular orbits. They are all likely tidally locked to TRAPPIST-1, and it is believed that each planet is in permanent day on one side and permanent night on the other. Their masses are comparable to that of Earth and they all lie in the same plane; seen from Earth, they pass in front of the star. This placement allowed the planets to be detected: when they pass in front of the star, its apparent magnitude dims.