![JWST Cycle 6 -- [NASA / STSCI]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/JWST-Cycle-6.jpg?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
[NASA / STSCI] Proposals involving only investigators based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or involving only PRC-based and U.S. investigators are subject to the NASA restriction on bilateral […]
Astronomy & Telescopes
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Transit Searches for Habitable-Zone Exoplanets with Artificial Intelligence
[astro-ph.EP]. Searching for Earth-sized planets in stellar habitable zones ultimately means finding a small number of very shallow, widely separated transits in noisy light curves.
![Differences in the TLS effect for the TRAPPIST-1 planets for our minimal two-zone model. The left panel shows a representative diagram of the stellar surface with increased spottedness in the polar regions. Lines are drawn to represent the center of the transit chord for each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets. As a representative example, the width of planet b’s transit chord is shaded in blue. In the right panel, the relative transit depth is shown assuming only stellar heterogeneity made up of cooler regions (upper) and hotter regions (lower) with no contribution from a planetary atmosphere over the wavelength range relevant to JWST NIRSpec/PRISM. The higher impact parameter planets (f, g, and h) are less impacted by the TLS effect than the lower impact parameter planets given our choice of zonal boundary. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Leveraging-Impact.png?resize=1200%2C717&ssl=1)
Posted inTRAPPIST-1
Leveraging Impact Parameter to Mitigate the Transit Light Source Effect: Early Insights from TRAPPIST-1
[astro-ph.EP] Stellar activity complicates exoplanet transmission spectra, particularly for smaller planets around M dwarfs with JWST.
![Normalized magnetospheric standoff distance rM/rpl as a function of the planetary magnetic field and the total stellar pressure for Modern Earth (left panel) and Early Earth (right panel) across the HZ of the host star. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-impact-of.png?resize=1200%2C714&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
The Impact Of Tidal Locking On Earth-like Planetary Dynamos
[astro-ph.EP] We investigate how tidal locking affects the planetary dynamo and the magnetospheres of Earth-like planets orbiting the habitable zones of M dwarfs.
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
ADORA: A Differentiable Optical Modeling And Astrometric Retrieval Framework For SHERA
[astro-ph.EP] Motivated by recent observations suggesting rings found in debris disks are wider than those in protoplanetary disks, we consider a picture in which planetesimals formed in radially narrow dust […]
![The timescale required for a 10 M⊕ring of planetesimals around a 1 M⊙ star to radially diffuse 0.1 M⊕ into the inner 0.5 au. The planetesimal density is assumed to be 4 g cm−3 . The black dashed line shows the boundary where the inner edge is just reachable by the radially diffusing disk, below which the escape velocity is less than the critical escape velocity (v0.5au) and planetesimals are not deliverable at this level. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Substructure.png?resize=1200%2C715&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Substructure Evolution From Protoplanetary To Debris Disks Driven By Mutually Gravitating Planetesimals And Implications On Kepler Resonances And Free-floating Planets
[astro-ph.EP]. Motivated by recent observations suggesting rings found in debris disks are wider than those in protoplanetary disks, we consider a picture in which planetesimals formed in radially narrow dust […]
![The four pillars of cross-survey science infrastructure. Each is specified by community studies and demonstrated in prototype; none is currently funded or owned as a shared capability. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Cross-Survey.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inReports, Roadmaps, & Plans
The Cross-Survey Decade: A Call to Action
[astro-ph.IM] By 2027, three flagship wide-field surveys will be operating simultaneously from ground and space, observing overlapping sky and representing more than $6 billion in US and European public investment.
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology
The Effects of M Star Age Dependent Ultraviolet Emission on Detecting and Interpreting Exoplanet Biosignatures
[astro-ph.EP] Given their abundance and observational advantages, M stars will arguably be the best candidates for characterizing and searching for biosignatures on terrestrial exoplanets in the near future.
![The PM showing the mounted SHAPE instrument (left) along with the zoomed in view (right). Three major sub-systems are also marked. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Shaping-SHAPE.png?resize=1200%2C714&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Shaping SHAPE – A Spectro-polarimeter Onboard Chandrayaan-3 To Observe Earth As An Exoplanet
[astro-ph.IM] Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) is an experimental instrument onboard the Propulsion Module (Orbiter) of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, designed to perform disc-integrated spectro-polarimetric observations of Earth from lunar […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Finding Habitable Exoplanets with Binary Relative Astrometry: Planet Detection and Characterization with the Microarcsecond Astrometric Retrieval Algorithm (MARA)
[astro-ph.EP] Binary relative astrometry is a technique to search for rocky planets in the habitable zone of nearby binary stars using 1D relative astrometry at the microarcsecond level.