Earth-sized planet Archives

AI Searching For Transits of Habitable-Zone Exoplanets-- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Transit Searches for Habitable-Zone Exoplanets with Artificial Intelligence

by Keith CowingAugust 25, 2026August 25, 2026

[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.

Retrieved emission spectra (blue regions) plotted with the true planet’s flux from our forward model (red) for each redox state considered (IW-6 to IW+6). The retrieved spectra denser region represents the 1𝜎 confidence level, intermediate region 2𝜎, thin region the 3𝜎 level. The observational noise from LIFEsim is shown as a gray envelope. The retrieved spectra capture most spectral features in observed planets, especially in the more pronounced oxidised cases (bottom row). -- [astro-ph.EP]

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets

Characterizing The Oxidation State Of Rocky Exoplanets With The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE)

by Keith CowingAugust 1, 2026August 1, 2026

[astro-ph.EP] The oxidation state of rocky exoplanets is expected to play a fundamental role in shaping the chemical composition of their secondary atmospheres by influencing the chemical composition of volcanically […]

Shell representations for flux and temperature at the time of a maximum DS of 20 m/s.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Modeling Doppler Shifts In Radial-Velocity Data With Deep Learning Toward Earth-mass Exoplanet Detection

by Keith CowingJune 19, 2026June 19, 2026

Detecting the tiny Doppler shifts induced by Earth-mass planets in stellar radial-velocity measurements remains extremely challenging due to stellar activity. Many deep-learning methods performing well on simulated data remain difficult […]

This artist’s impression displays TRAPPIST-1 and its planets reflected in a surface. The potential for water on each of the worlds is also represented by the frost, water pools, and steam surrounding the scene. © NASA/R. Hurt/T. Pyle

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, TRAPPIST-1, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Between Eternal Night And Day, The Faces Of Two Cousins Of The Earth

by Keith CowingApril 14, 2026April 14, 2026

Red dwarf stars—cooler and smaller than our Sun—make up more than 75% of the stars in our Galaxy. Astronomers have shown that small, Earth-like planets are common around this type […]

Eccentricity evolution of the four planets in the TOI-700 system over 10,000 years of the integration after 100 Myr of evolution. This plot is a zoom-in of a small range of bottom panel of Figure 2.. Additionally, all planets have low but non-zero eccentricity 0.03 < e < 0.1 over their entire evolution. -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Dynamical Interactions and Habitability in the TOI-700 Multi-Planet System

by Keith CowingFebruary 3, 2026February 3, 2026

The discovery of a second earth sized planet (TOI-700e) interior to the habitable candidate TOI-700d has prompted further research into this system, as the additional planet makes the TOI-700 system […]

Multi-color ground-based light curves for our five targets. Data points represent 10-minute binned photometry, with light curves obtained using identical filters and exposure times phase-folded together. Black curves show the median transit model derived from the posterior distribution, with colored shading indicating the 68% confidence intervals. Blue curves represent the nominal TESS light curve model projected into the corresponding ground-based filters. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

From Earths To Super-Earths: Five New Small Planets Transiting M Dwarf Stars

by Keith CowingDecember 18, 2025December 18, 2025

Earth-sized planets transiting M dwarf stars present one of the best opportunities with current facilities for studying the atmospheric and bulk compositions of terrestrial worlds.

Phased-folded and 2-minute binned TESS light curve (left panel) and detrended Palomar/WIRC light curves (middle and right panels) for the two transit observations of TOI-2267 d. Residuals after the best-fit transit light curve model has been subtracted are shown in the lower panels. Unbinned data are shown as grey circles, with 10 minute binned points overplotted as black circles. The best joint-fit transit models are overplotted as blue lines for the TESS data and red lines for the Palomar data, with 100 random draws from the posterior distribution to illustrate the typical model uncertainty. All detrended light curves are available electronically as data behind the figure. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Validation Of A Third Earth-sized Planet In The TOI-2267 Binary System

by Keith CowingDecember 13, 2025December 13, 2025

We report the validation of a third terrestrial exoplanet in the nearby (22 pc) TOI-2267 system.

MATRIX injection-and-recovery experiment conducted to establish the detection limits using the ten TESS sectors described in Sect. 3.1. We explored a total of 18000 different scenarios, where each pixel evaluated 40 of them. Color indicates recovery rate: bright yellow for high recovery, dark purple/black for low recovery. The solid blue line indicates the 95% recovery contour, the dashed white line marks the 50%, and the solid white line corresponds to the 5%. Blue, red, and green points show planets b and c, and candidate .02, respectively. Blackedged circles denote planets orbiting the primary star; edge-free circles indicate the secondary star. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Two Warm Earth-sized Exoplanets And An Earth-sized Candidate In The M5V-M6V Binary System TOI-2267

by Keith CowingNovember 25, 2025November 25, 2025

We report the discovery of two “warm” exoplanets orbiting a very tight pair of small, cool stars called TOI-2267.

Artist’s impression of TOI-2267 ©Mario Sucerquia (University of Grenoble Alpes). Credit ©Mario Sucerquia (University of Grenoble Alpes).

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Press Release

Three Earth-sized Planets Discovered In A Compact Binary System

by Keith CowingOctober 27, 2025October 27, 2025

An international team of researchers has just revealed the existence of three Earth-sized planets in the binary stellar system TOI-2267 located about 190 light-years away. This discovery, published in Astronomy […]

Stars selected by the AYO (Stark et al. 2024) 8m LUVOIR B yield calculation (left) and the 6m ”scenario F” yield calculation (right) in distance vs. luminosity space. Points are color coded based on the fraction of simulations in which each star was selected. Gray points in the background are the stars in the HPIC (Tuchow et al. 2024). -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report

HWO Target Stars And Systems: A Prioritized Community List of Potential Stellar Targets For The Habitable Worlds Observatory’s ExoEarth Survey

by Keith CowingSeptember 26, 2025September 26, 2025

The HWO Target Stars and Systems 2025 (TSS25) list is a community-developed catalog of potential stellar targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its survey to directly image Earth-sized […]