[Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments RCN] Opportunity to contribute to the “White Paper on Phototrophic Biosignatures: Research Priorities for the Search for Life on Other Worlds“, developed as community […]
Imaging & Spectroscopy
![Cumulative oxygen loss for planets at the habitable zone of each sample star over 1 Gyr, assuming constant stellar XUV flux at the HZ and no replenishment of oxygen. The curves are calculated using the energy-limited O2 loss prescription from V. S. Airapetian et al. 2017. Colored lines show individual stars, with solid segments representing the earliest ages (for stars with age ranges) and dashed segments extending beyond the minimum age. The black solid line shows the solar reference. Horizontal lines indicate the present-day Earth atmospheric O2 content (∼0.2 bars; dotted) and the total mass of Earth’s oceans (∼240 bars; dashed), providing reference levels for planetary habitability. -- [astro-ph.SR]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Panchromatic.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inHabitable Zones
Panchromatic Spectra of Nearby Low-mass and Sun-like Stars with Directly Imageable Habitable Zones
[astro-ph.SR] Characterizing the high-energy radiation environments of stars plays a critical role in determining which systems’ planets are capable of retaining atmospheres and sustaining habitable conditions.
Posted inMars
Miraflores Butte On Mars
[NASA] NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this sand-capped butte, nicknamed “Miraflores,” estimated to be about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, with its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on June 11, 2026, […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Exploring Long-period Architectures: Four New Planet Candidates from Kepler with Periods >342 days
[astro-ph.EP] The Kepler detection pipeline, as well as the transit method, has a bias towards shorter periods, leaving a dearth of detections at longer orbital periods. This relative lack of […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
JWST Color Sequence Of Transiting Exoplanets And Directly Imaged Substellar Objects
[astro-ph.EP] Color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) have been foundational across astrophysics, from galaxies and stars to brown dwarfs, and JWST now extends them to transiting exoplanets and self-luminous substellar objects at overlapping […]
![Keck/NIRSPEC M -band spectrum of TRAPPIST-1 (black) with best-fit model (red). Top: echelle order 16 (λ ≈ 4.63–4.73 µm). Bottom: order 15 (λ ≈ 4.93–5.04 µm). Residuals (data minus model) are shown beneath each panel. Gray shading indicates the relative telluric transmission (dimensionless, 0–1). Masked pixels are omitted from the retrieval. -- [astro-ph.SR]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Isotopic.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inTRAPPIST-1
The Isotopic And Elemental Abundances of Planet-Host Star TRAPPIST-1
[astro-ph.SR]. Elemental and isotopic abundances are key tracers of planet formation, stellar evolution, and Galactic chemical evolution. Very low-mass stars are particularly interesting in this regard, because unlike more massive […]
![Surface temperature of the 22 exoplanets in an aquaplanet configuration. Obliquity and eccentricity are set to zero, and all are tidally locked with Earth-like atmospheric chemistry and pressure. Level lines correspond to the temperatures of 223.15, 273.15, and 323.15 K. White lines indicate the terminator, that is, the boundary between the illuminated and the dark sides of a planet. Black dots indicate the prevalence of sea ice (ice fraction larger than 0.5). -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Assessing-1.png?resize=1200%2C717&ssl=1)
Posted inHabitable Zones
Assessing The Climate And Habitability Of Tidally Locked Rocky Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] Tidally locked exoplanets orbiting M dwarf stars are prime targets in the search for habitable worlds, yet their complex climate dynamics challenge conventional models of habitability.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes
NASA SMD ROSES-25 Amendment 68: New Opportunity: D.8 Habitable Worlds Observatory Precursor Science Investigations [UPDATE]
[NASA]. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is a large-aperture ultraviolet/visible/near-infrared observatory concept recommended by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine decadal survey, “Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and […]
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes
Roman Space Telescope: Enabling Images Of Distant Worlds
[Max Planck Institute for Astronomy] The Roman Space Telescope is designed to directly image exoplanets using complex opto-mechanical systems developed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
Posted inAstrochemistry
Interstellar Aromatic Infrared Bands: IR Absorption Spectroscopy Of The Lowest Triplet State Of Naphthalene
[astro-ph.GA] The aromatic infrared bands (AIBs), emission features observed ubiquitously across a wide variety of interstellar objects, are commonly attributed to radiative cooling of highly-excited ground-state vibrational levels of polycyclic […]