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FTL_Diesel t1_je0c1y0 wrote

Reply to comment by gg_account in James Webb Space Telescope finds no atmosphere on Earth-like TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet by locus_towers

This has changed a bit. More recent analyses of the TTVs in the system put all the Trappist planets right on the line for Earth/Venus-like composition. See Figure 12 here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.01074

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gg_account t1_je0pbaf wrote

Interesting thanks! The data I was looking at was apparently from 2018. So it seems the jump to "there must be a thick atmosphere" came from an assumption that the planet had as much iron as Earth?

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FTL_Diesel t1_je17m5v wrote

The observation planning assumed that -1b would have an atmosphere similar to Venus. This is why they observed five eclipses, since a Venus-like atmosphere would have been just detectable after combining all that data. What ended up happening is that the dayside of the planet is much hotter than predicted for a Venus-like atmosphere, and the eclipse was actually detected right off the bat on the first observation!

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