Université de Montréal

Published purpose

Following the JWST ERS and Cycle 1 GO Announcement of Opportunity published on June 14, 2021, the CSA is providing funding via a Grant Agreement to the university to conduct their research using the JWST data. The project will be about the exoplanetary system TRAPPIST-1 made up of seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting a nearby red dwarf star. This system is special because all seven of its planets transit the star: they periodically pass in front of the star as seen from the Earth, thus hiding a part of the stellar light. Moreover, some of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are in the habitable zone of the system. TRAPPIST-1 is thus an interesting system to study to search for traces of life outside the solar system. With these observations, we will determine whether those planets have an atmosphere or not. This will also help the scientific community plan for future observations of TRAPPIST-1 with JWST.