Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2016

PLANETOLOGY 5 F or a few, the name TRAPPIST will bring to mind a renowned and popular beer, produced since the end of the 17 th cen- tury by the eponymous monastic order orig- inated in Soligny-la-Trappe (Normandy). TRAPPIST is, however, also the name of a robotic telescope dedicated to the search for extrasolar planets, which had a key role JULY-AUGUST 2016 ng system A rtist’s rendition of the TRAP- PIST-1 system, seen from the surface of the outermost planet, perhaps the one most simi- lar to Earth. [ESO/ M. Kornmesser] in an important recent discovery. The TRAn- siting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Tele- scope is located at ESO’s La Silla Obser- vatory (Chile), has a diameter of just 60 cm and it is operated by the Université de Liège (Belgium). A substantial part of the observing time is devoted to monitoring the brightness of about 60 ultracool dwarfs