EXOTRAPPIST
TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescopes) is a twofold project devoted to (1) the detection and study of transiting exoplanets, and (2) the study of asteroids and comets. Its exoplanet program, EXOTRAPPIST, has contributed to the detection of hundreds of exoplanets. The project operates two robotic telescopes, TRAPPIST-South in Chile and TRAPPIST-North in Morocco.
In 2008, Michaël Gillon, then postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Observatory, had the idea of a small robotic telescope dedicated to the observation of exoplanet transits. Back in Liège in 2009, he talked about it with his colleague Emmanuël Jehin, expert in the study of comets, and they set up together the project thanks to a FNRS funding which allowed the acquisition and the installation of a first robotic telescope of 60cm aperture (diameter of the primary mirror) in Chile, with the help of the Geneva Observatory. This telescope started its operations in 2010. A funding from the University of Liege allowed to extend the project to the Southern Hemisphere in 2017 with the installation of a second telescope in Morocco, in collaboration with the Cadi Ayad University of Marrakech.
The scientific program of TRAPPIST is divided into two sub-projects: (1) EXOTRAPPIST, a search for and study of transiting exoplanets (PI: Michaël Gillon), and (2) a comet and asteroid observing program (PI: Emmanuël Jehin from the ORCA group). Under the responsibility of the EXOTIC team, EXOTRAPPIST is mainly focused on the validation and follow-up of transiting exoplanet candidates identified by wide field surveys such as WASP, CoRoT, Kepler, and TESS. Between 2011 and 2019, it also included the SPECULOOS prototype that discovered the extraordinary TRAPPIST-1 system.
