emission spectroscopy Archives - Astrobiology

The Cosmic Shoreline. Light-green dots are all known exoplanets with reported atmospheric detections from the ExoAtmospheres database, noting that some of these detections are tentative or remain contested in the literature (e.g., GJ 1132 b). Solar System objects are marked as black crosses or green triangles if they host an atmosphere. The red dashed line is the cosmic shoreline as defined by Zahnle & Catling (2017). The black dotted is the same classical line, preserving the slope, but taking as zero point the exoplanet 55 Cnc e. The black dashed-dotted line is our newly proposed Empirical Exoplanet Cosmic Shoreline (EECS), which makes use of both Mars and several exoplanet atmospheric detections to define the slope and zero-point value. The numbers highlighted in the inset show the names of the seven planets discussed in the definition of the EECS. -- astro-ph.EP

An Empirical Determination Of The Cosmic Shoreline

by Keith CowingJune 23, 2026June 23, 2026

The cosmic shoreline concept was introduced to separate planets with atmospheres from those without, by relating the cumulative X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) instellation (integrated over the planet’s lifetime) to the […]

Schematic of ground-based transit photometry observations of TOI–1752 system. The orbital phase coverage of TOI–1752.01 is shown in the top panel (nights of Mar 04, 2020, Apr 26, 2021, Apr 27, 2021, Jun 19, 2021, Sep 08, 2020, and Apr 21, 2024) and that of TOI–1752.02 in the bottom panel (nights of Feb 26, 2025, Jun 04, 2024, Mar 30, 2025, and Jul 06, 2025). The instrument/telescope used for the observation and the in-transit coverage percentage are shown in grey. The inclination 𝑖 is taken into account. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Press Release

A Gem System With A Lava World And A Habitable Zone Sub-Neptune Orbiting TOI-1752

by Keith CowingApril 21, 2026April 21, 2026

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has delivered a large number of transiting planet candidates around nearby stars by identifying periodic decreases in stellar brightness. A top-down view of the […]

Diagram of TOI-5800 system. The star is shown to scale with the planet’s orbit. -- astro-ph.EP

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

An Eccentric Sub-Neptune Moving Into the Evaporation Desert

by Keith CowingMay 16, 2025May 16, 2025

Though missions such as Kepler, K2, and TESS have discovered >2,000 sub-Neptune and Neptunian planets, there is a dearth of such planets at close-in (P≲3 days) orbits.

Chemical Evolution Of An Evaporating Lava

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Status Report

Chemical Evolution Of An Evaporating Lava Pool

by Keith CowingNovember 24, 2024November 24, 2024

Many known rocky exoplanets are so highly irradiated that their dayside surfaces are molten, and `silicate atmospheres’, composed of rock-forming elements, are generated above these lava pools.

[Top] Wide-angle view of the NIRPS back end prior to the addition of the thermal enclosure. Fibres arrive from the left the the cryostat. -- astro-ph.EP

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

NIRPS First Light and Early Science: Breaking the 1 m/s RV Precision Barrier at Infrared Wavelengths

by Keith CowingJune 24, 2024June 24, 2024

The Near-InfraRed Planet Searcher or NIRPS is a precision radial velocity spectrograph developed through collaborative efforts among laboratories in Switzerland, Canada, Brazil, France, Portugal and Spain.

Comparison of SPECULOOS-3 b with other rocky exoplanets. a) Sizes of host stars and incident stellar flux of known sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets. The size of the symbols scales linearly with the radius of the planet. The background is colour-coded according to stellar size (in units of the Sun’s size), with the ultra-cool dwarf regime shown in orange. The positions of the Solar System terrestrial planets are shown for reference. One can see on this Figure that SPECULOOS-3 b extends the unique planet sample of TRAPPIST-1 to a larger stellar flux. b) SPECULOOS-3 b in the context of other known transiting terrestrial exoplanets (Rp < 1.6R⊕) that are cool enough (Teq < 880 K [80]) to have a dayside made of solid rock (in contrast to hotter magma worlds with molten surfaces). The planets are shown as a function of their radius and their Emission Spectroscopy Metric [62]. They are color-coded as a function of their equilibrium temperature. The shaded green area highlights planetary radii most similar to Earth’s (0.9–1.1 R⊕). The dashed horizontal line represents the threshold of ESM=7.5 recommended by ref. [62] to identify the top targets for emission spectroscopy with JWST. SPECULOOS-3 b is one of the smallest planets amenable to emission spectroscopy with MIRI/LRS. Data from https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu (16th of October 2023). -- astro-ph.EP

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

Detection Of An Earth-sized Exoplanet Orbiting The Nearby Ultracool Dwarf Star SPECULOOS-3

by Keith CowingJune 4, 2024June 4, 2024

Located at the bottom of the main sequence, ultracool dwarf stars are widespread in the solar neighbourhood. Nevertheless, their extremely low luminosity has left their planetary population largely unexplored, and […]