[astro-ph.EP] The characterization of terrestrial exoplanets and the conditions that lead to divergent climate outcomes is a primary goal of exoplanetary science.
The Venus Zone (VZ) provides a framework for identifying planets that may have experienced runaway greenhouse processes similar to Venus, and the statistical properties of such planets bear directly on models of planetary habitability.
Here we present a quantitative estimate of the expected yield of VZ terrestrial planets from ESA’s PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission. We combine the predicted PLATO planet yield for Earth-size (0.8–1.25 R⊕) and super-Earth (1.25–2.0 R⊕) planets with empirical occurrence rates for VZ terrestrial planets derived from Kepler data.
Under conservative assumptions, we estimate that PLATO will detect ∼170–280 VZ terrestrial planets (0.8–2.0 R⊕), including ∼40–80 Earth-size (0.8–1.25 R⊕) planets, during a nominal 4-year mission. For the bright P1 sample (V≤11), we estimate ∼50–85 terrestrial and ∼13–22 Earth-size VZ detections, enabling radial velocity mass determination and atmospheric characterization of the most favorable targets with JWST and future facilities.
We discuss the implications of this yield for comparative studies of Earth-Venus divergence, synergies with the DAVINCI, VERITAS, and EnVision missions to Venus, and the role of PLATO in advancing our understanding of the runaway greenhouse boundary.
The current census of 384 VZ terrestrial planets in incident stellar flux (Seff ) versus planet radius space. Points are colored by discovery mission: Kepler (blue circles), K2 (purple squares), TESS (red triangles), and other surveys including radial velocity (green diamonds). The light orange shading indicates the VZ. The darker band at the right edge of the VZ shows the range of the outer VZ boundary across the host star effective temperatures in the sample and the dashed line marks the solar value (Seff = 1.107 S⊕). The locations of Venus and Earth are marked as filled stars. The outer VZ near the runaway greenhouse boundary is sparsely populated at Earth-size radii, highlighting the region where PLATO will contribute the most new detections. — [astro-ph.EP]
Stephen R. Kane, Emma L. Miles, Colby M. Ostberg, Erika Kohler, James B. Garvin
Comments: 14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in PASP
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2607.14225 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2607.14225v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.14225
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Submission history
From: Stephen Kane
[v1] Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:00:30 UTC (64 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.14225
Astrobiology,
