an artist's rendering of a solar system with eight planets

Abstract Concept of TRAPPIST-1 System Caption: TRAPPIST-1 System. This artist's concept appeared on the Feb. 23, 2017 cover of the journal Nature announcing that the nearby star TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven Earth-sized planets orbiting it. Two of the planets were discovered in 2016 by TRAPPIST (the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope) in Chile. Credits: Illustration: NASA and JPL/Caltech Science: NASA, ESA, J. de Wit (MIT), H. Wakeford (University of Exeter/STScI), and N. Lewis (STScI)