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FTL_Diesel t1_je0d3zh wrote

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

For two reasons:

  1. The inner-most planets are the easiest to observe. It will be almost impossible to observe e, f, and g in secondary eclipse, though there is a transmission spectrum that has been taken of -1g, and another group has observed -1c in secondary eclipse.

  2. It is an overstatement to say that -1b (or any of the planets) would obviously be a bare rock in space. Indeed, the planning for this observation assumed a roughly Venus-like and cooler atmosphere that would have required all five secondary eclipse observations combined to detect any signal. In the event, the planet is a hot rock, and the eclipse was seen in just the first of those five observations, which was quite surprising!

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Trumpologist t1_je165x4 wrote

Doesn’t this make C unlikely too :/

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FTL_Diesel t1_je16xyc wrote

Not necessarily. It could be that -1c has a Venus-like atmosphere.

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