Sub-Neptunes are small planets between the size of the Earth and Neptune. The orbital and bulk properties of transiting sub-Neptunes can provide clues for their formation and evolution of small […]
Ariel Mission
Posted inAriel Mission, Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Neptune, Status Report, Uranus
The Possibility of Hydrogen-Water Demixing in Uranus, Neptune, K2-18b and TOI-270d
The internal structures of Uranus and Neptune remain unknown. In addition, sub-Neptunes are now thought to be the most common type of exoplanets.
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Maximizing Ariel’s Survey Leverage For Population-Level Studies Of Exoplanets
ESA’s Ariel mission will be uniquely suited to performing population-level studies of exoplanets. Most of these studies consist of quantifying trends between an Ariel-measured quantity, y, and an a priori […]
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Ten Aligned Orbits: Planet Migration in the Era of JWST and Ariel
Understanding the diverse formation and migration pathways that shape exoplanetary systems requires characterizing both their atmospheric properties and their orbital dynamics.
Posted inAriel Mission, Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Refractory Phosphorus In The HD 100546 Protoplanetary Disk
The phosphorus budget of planets is intertwined with their formation history and is thought to influence their habitability.
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
De-jittering Ariel: An Optimized Algorithm
The European Space Agency’s Ariel mission, scheduled for launch in 2029, aims to conduct the first large-scale survey of atmospheric spectra of transiting exoplanets.
![Focal planes produced by ExoSim 2 for the Ariel VISPhot channel using two different PSFs. The focal plane array size is 64 × 64 pixels, oversampled by a factor of 3. Both panels are presented in decibels ([dB]) units to highlight the PSF side lobes. The left panel shows the effective PSF using an Airy function, which is cropped to the 8th zero. The right panel presents the effective PSF using a PAOS-simulated PSF as input, including aberrations and a defocusing of 200 nm root mean square (RMS) on the wavefront. -- astro-ph.IM](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ExoSim-2-The-New-Exoplanet.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inAI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Ariel Mission, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
ExoSim 2: The New Exoplanet Observation Simulator Applied to the Ariel Space Mission
ExoSim 2 is the next generation of the Exoplanet Observation Simulator (ExoSim) tailored for spectro-photometric observations of transiting exoplanets from space, ground, and sub-orbital platforms.
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Press Release, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Stellar Cartography, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Venus, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
A Rare Venus Solar Transit Helps Unravel Exoplanet Atmospheres
In the next decade, researchers will start probing the atmosphere of planets as small as Earth and Venus orbiting nearby stars. But although these two Solar System planets are similar […]
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
NASA ROSES-24 Amendment 60: New Opportunity: D.21 U.S. Contributions to Ariel Preparatory Science
Ariel is the fourth European Space Agency (ESA) Cosmic Vision medium class science mission which will use near- and mid-infrared spectroscopy to characterize the atmospheres of approximately 1000 exoplanets, thereby […]
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Citizen Science / Open Science, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Press Release
Competition To Unlock The Atmospheres Of Distant Planets Using AI
The competition, based on the European Space Agency’s Ariel space mission and featured at the NeurIPS 2024 machine learning conference, will tackle one of astronomy’s most complex and important data […]