Peering Into TRAPPIST-1e: JWST’s First Glimpses of a Habitable-Zone Rocky World

Espinoza and collaborators used JWST to observe four transits of TRAPPIST-1 e, a rocky planet in the habitable zone. They found that stellar activity strongly contaminates the data but developed new statistical methods to handle it. Their results rule out a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere, suggesting TRAPPIST-1 e, if it has an atmosphere, likely hosts heavier gases such as carbon dioxide.