Water is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems and the delivery of volatiles to the surfaces of potentially habitable planets.
The habitable zone (HZ) is the region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet.
Scientists looking for signs of life beyond our solar system face major challenges, one of which is that there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone to consider. To narrow the search, they must figure out: What kinds of stars are most likely to host habitable planets?
Habitable zones are regions around stars where large bodies of liquid water can be sustained on a planet or satellite.
The aim of our study is to explore the possible existence of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of 55~Cancri, an effort pursued based on detailed orbital stability simulations.
The habitable zone (HZ) is defined as the range of distances from a host star within which liquid water, a key requirement for life, may exist at a planet's surface. Substantially more CO2 than present in Earth's modern atmosphere is required to maintain clement temperatures for most of the HZ, with concentrations of several bars required at the outer edge.
A new astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State-led team of scientists provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from nearby stars, allowing astronomers to detect planets capable of having liquid water on their surfaces that orbit cool stars outside our solar system.
Recent studies have shown that ocean dynamics can have a significant warming effect on the permanent night sides of 1 to 1 tidally locked terrestrial exoplanets with Earth-like atmospheres and oceans in the middle of the habitable zone.
Star formation is spatially clustered across a range of environments, from dense stellar clusters to unbound associations. As a result, radiative or dynamical interactions with neighbouring stars disrupt (proto)planetary systems and limit their radii, leaving a lasting impact on their potential habitability.
Atmospheric ozone plays an important role on the temperature structure of the atmosphere. However, it has not been included in previous studies on the effect of an increasing solar radiation on the Earth's climate.
With TESS and ground-based surveys searching for rocky exoplanets around cooler, nearby stars, the number of Earth-sized exoplanets that are well-suited for atmospheric follow-up studies will increase significantly.
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects the climate of terrestrial planets.
An Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf would be exposed to different UV environments than Earth, influencing both its atmospheric photochemistry and UV surface environment.
The habitable zone (HZ) is the circular region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. Space missions employ the HZ to select promising targets for follow-up habitability assessment.
Understanding the evolution of Earth and potentially habitable Earth-like worlds is essential to fathom our origin in the Universe.
The habitable zone (HZ) is the circumstellar region where standing bodies of liquid water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. Conventional definitions assume that CO2 and H2O are the only greenhouse gases.
Traditional definitions of the habitable zone assume that habitable planets contain a carbonate-silicate cycle that regulates CO2 between the atmosphere, surface, and the interior.
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history.
We continue to investigate the binary system Kepler-16, consisting of a K-type main-sequence star, a red dwarf, and a circumbinary Saturnian planet. As part of our study, we describe the system's habitable zone based on different climate models.
The search for an inhabited planet, other than our own, is a driver of planetary exploration in our solar system and beyond. Using information from our own planet to inform search strategies allows for a targeted search.