Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2025

50 ASTRO PUBLISHING more, Maryland, a principal investi- gator on the research team. Two sci- entific papers detailing the team’s initial results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . Of the seven Earth-sized worlds or- biting the red dwarf star TRAPPIST- 1, planet e is of particular interest because it orbits the star at a dis- tance where water on the surface is theoretically possible — not too hot, not too cold — but only if the planet has an atmosphere. That’s where Webb comes in. Researchers aimed the telescope’s powerful NIR- Spec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument at the system as planet e transited, or passed in front of, its star. Starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere, if there is one, will be partially absorbed, and the corresponding dips in the light spec- trum that reaches Webb will tell astronomers what chemicals are found there. With each additional transit, the atmospheric contents become clearer as more data is col- lected. Though multiple possibilities remain open for planet e because only four transits have been ana- lyzed so far, the researchers feel confident that the planet does not still have its primary, or original, at- mosphere. TRAPPIST-1 is a very ac- tive star, with frequent flares, so it is not surprising to researchers that any hydrogen-helium atmosphere with which the planet may have formed would have been stripped off by stellar radiation. NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 S cientists are in the midst of ob- serving the exoplanet TRAPPIST- 1 e with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Careful analysis of the results so far presents several potential scenarios for what the planet’s atmosphere and surface may be like, as NASA science mis- sions lay key groundwork to answer the question, “are we alone in the universe?” “Webb’s infrared instru- ments are giving us more detail than we’ve ever had access to be- fore, and the initial four observa- tions we’ve been able to make of planet e are showing us what we will have to work with when the rest of the information comes in,” said Néstor Espinoza of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Balti- Webb looks at TRAPPIST-1 e by NASA/ESA/CSA Leah Ramsay & Hannah Braun