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arxiv: 1704.02261 · v2 · pith:YFXVJ5JQnew · submitted 2017-04-07 · 🌌 astro-ph.EP

Plausible Compositions of the Seven TRAPPIST-1 Planets Using Long-term Dynamical Simulations

classification 🌌 astro-ph.EP
keywords planetsdynamicalbeencompositionsidentifymassesorbitalplanetary
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TRAPPIST-1 is a nearby ultra-cool dwarf that is host to a remarkable planetary system consisting of seven transiting planets. The orbital properties and radii of the planets have been well-constrained, and recently the masses of the inner six planets have been measured with additional ground and space-based photometric observations. Large uncertainties in these mass measurements have prevented a robust analysis of the planetary compositions. Here we perform many thousands of N-body dynamical simulations with planet properties perturbed from the observed values and identify those that are stable for millions of years. This allows us to identify self-consistent orbital solutions that can be used in future studies. From our range of dynamical masses, we find that most of the planets are consistent with an Earth-like composition, where TRAPPIST-1f is likely to have a volatile-rich envelope.

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