The Daily Free Press – TRAPPIST-1 discovery holds promise for BU astronomers
Philip Muirhead, Julie Skinner, Mark Veyette, and Aurora Kesseli spoke to The Daily Free Press this week about their research team focused on finding habitable planets with space telescopes.
‘“The problem with telescopes on the ground is that you get interrupted when you’re observing because the sun is coming up,” Muirhead said. “You can’t operate those during the day because the sky is very bright. With the space telescope, you don’t have to deal with the problem of the sun rising — you can just stare at a star for a very long time without any interruption. Because of that fact, they were able to stare at that star for 20 days, and they discovered four additional planets.”
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Looking to the future, Muirhead said he is hopeful for the discovery of more systems just as monumental as TRAPPIST-1.’
Read the rest of the Article here: https://dailyfreepress.com/blog/2017/03/02/trappist-1-discovery-holds-promise-bu-astronomers/