ACP Expert Helps Discover Largest Batch of Habitable-Zone Exoplanets Around One Star

[Bob Denny]

Congratulations to our ACP Expert customer Universite de Liege (Belgique) Institut de Astrophysique's and their TRAPPIST observatory in Chile. This exoplanet system was first discovered by TRAPPIST last May (2016), which found the first three of them. The TRAPPIST observatory is automated using our ACP Expert system and makes use of the unique dispatch scheduler that is the key to ACP Expert's efficiency and low observer workload.

Following TRAPPIST's discovery, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with several ground-based telescopes including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven, with one more as yet unconfirmed.

We couldn't be more proud to have played a part in this major scientific achievement. Here is the NASA press release:

NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star