The Cuileans is set on the planet TRAPPIST-1E which in the book is called Etoria. But where is TRAPPIST-1E and why was it used as the world in which the Cuileans was set? These questions can be answered in this chapter.
TRAPPIST-1 is the host star to the TRAPPIST solar system that contains seven exoplanets at in and around 40 light years from Earth. This is relatively close to our solar system, astronomically speaking. TRAPPIST-1 was first discovered in 1999 by an astronomer John Gizis and his colleagues who named this star 2MASS J23062928-0502285 after the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) telescope. Thankfully, this star was renamed to something much easier in May 2016 when scientists announced that they found three planets orbiting this star using the TRAPPIST telescope in Chile. Hence, the name TRAPPIST-1.
A bit of a backstory to the naming of this telescope; it was named TRAPPIST due to the fact that the Belgian telescope manufacturers in Liege very much enjoyed Belgian Trappist beer. Therefore, they were forced to come up with a totally legitimate and definitely not improvised acronym for TRAPPIST such as 'Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope'. As a Belgian myself, I can say that I couldn't agree that there is a more suitable name!
Anyway, TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool red dwarf star meaning that it is much smaller than our Sun and primarily emits infra-red radiation. IR radiation has a certain wavelength that is undetected by the naked eye. It was therefore picked up by an IR camera. However, the star does emit a small amount of red light that lies within the visible light spectrum for humans.
Since this very dim red star is twelve times smaller than the Sun and only slightly larger than Jupiter, the planets orbit very close to this host. In fact, they orbit so close to TRAPPIST-1, that all seven exoplanets are within the orbital radius of Mercury to our Sun! Since their orbits are so close to their host star, it is very likely that they are tidally locked. This means that every planet doesn't rotate around its own axis, like Earth does, which gives the transition from night to day. Therefore, one side of the planet is constantly facing TRAPPIST and is likely very hot and may experience large amounts of non-life sustaining radiation. Moreover, the other side of the planets are in perpetual night. Depending on the atmospheres of the different planets, the heat from the side receiving sunlight may be equally distributed around the planet. However, if that is not the case, there may be a so-called 'Twilight Zone' between the bright and dark side of the planets which may allow for carbon-life to flourish.
Furthermore, red dwarf stars happen to have very large solar flares, much larger than the flares we see from our own sun. These flares can cause immense increases in emitted light and electromagnetic radiation which can be destructive to the atmospheres of the planets orbiting it. This is because these flares can cause ultraviolet (UV) rays to penetrate the atmosphere and could potentially eradicate any chance of life forming or may have done so already! These flares can even boil off all existing water on these planets, that's how powerful they are. However, the weird thing about TRAPPIST-1 is that the flares that this star experiences are at a much lower scale than your typical red dwarf star. Nonetheless, it is still possible that since all the planets are in very close proximity to this star, that all these phenomena could have still occurred.
However, I like to be optimistic so I can actually write a story surrounding this because no one would read a story about a planet with no life going round and round a star for billions of years. There is a so-called 'habitable zone' located in the Trappist-1 system that contains planets 1E to 1G. I had the choice to base this book on either Trappist 1E or Trappist 1G. Since Trappist 1E had several characteristics similar to our own Earth, I chose it. The reason why I didn't consider Trappist 1F is because it is likely that it has a thick atmosphere that causes any water on the planet to exist in gaseous form. This means that the surface of Trappist 1F may have very immense pressures and temperatures which makes it similar to Venus. Unless there are some sort of extraterrestrial beings that can survive being in a scorching warzone of a planet, then these conditions definitely wouldn't sustain carbon life. These are details that I gathered as of 2023. With the new James Webb telescope, new, more up-to-date information may emerge about the details of these planets' atmosphere.
As I said earlier, TRAPPIST 1E has some Earth-like characteristics. The most striking would be that it has a large iron core, just like Earth, and is of a similar size and density. It also has a very similar acceleration due to the gravity. Its orbital position in relation to TRAPPIST-1 means that it gets almost the same amount of light from its host star as the Earth gets from the sun. Depending on 1E's atmosphere, it may allow carbon life forms to exist, which makes it one of the most probable known exoplanets to sustain life! But of course, this is not confirmed. With the launch of the James Webb telescope in 2022, one of its first major projects is to capture pictures of this planet to see if we can find other life forms outside of our solar system! Pretty cool, right?
In relation to this story, I am going to assume that 1E experiences day and night. Everything is observed in a red haze rather than the white light we experience on Earth. With all the planets being in such close proximity to each other, the people on 1E can see the surface of the neighbouring planets in great detail during their orbits. To put it into perspective, you would be able to see the surface of every planet in much more detail than we observe our moon. Since there is no such thing as days and weeks and even months, the time reference will be in years. For Trappist 1E, 1 year is around 149 hours or 6 Earth days. I will have the time conversion next to each respective time in every chapter.
Overall, I cannot even begin to imagine what life would be like on these planets but I will try my utmost best to express whatever plunders into my imagination in words so you can get a glimpse into not only the wonders of the Trappist system, but also the interpretation of this solar system from somebody else's perspective. Maybe you have a completely different idea of what these planets look like or how any living form may present itself already from the information you now know about the Trappist system. That's what makes this whole scenario so interesting. None of us truly know what lies in this mysterious, yet fascinating solar system. For now.
Sources:
All sources from nasa.gov provide really cool interactive 3D visuals of the TRAPPIST-1 system, if you are interested.
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/trappist1/
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/trappist1/
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/3453/trappist-1-e/
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/3458/trappist-1-g/
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Df14XswwFCvyPuRtlhIGc?si=9711a8bdb79d4f2c
Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, T. Pyle (IPAC)
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The Cuileans
FantasyA fantasy novel enriched with Irish and Estonian mythological creatures. - The legend of the Sword of Taara was a myth everyone knew but no one believed. Until one day, a white haired girl with a connection to nature walks out of the uninhabited No...
