A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds […]
extrasolar
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Effects of XUV Radiation on Circumbinary Planets
Several circumbinary planets have recently been discovered. The orbit of a planet around a binary stellar system poses several dynamic constraints. The effects that radiation from the host stars may […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Geology and Photometric Variation of Solar System Bodies with Minor Atmospheres: Implications for Solid Exoplanets
A reasonable basis for future astronomical investigations of exoplanets lies in our best knowledge of the planets and satellites in the Solar System. Solar System bodies exhibit a wide variety […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Searching for Habitable Super-Earth Exoplanets Around Nearby M-dwarfs
Detection and characterization of potentially habitable Earth-size extrasolar planets is one of the major goals of contemporary astronomy. By applying the transit method to very low-mass M-dwarfs, it is possible […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Disentangling Planets and Stellar Activity for Gliese 667C
Gliese 667C is an M1.5V star with a multi-planet system, including planet candidates in the habitable zone (HZ). The exact number of planets in the system is unclear, because the […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets
How Can We Find Tiny Particles In Exoplanet Atmospheres?
It may seem like magic, but astronomers have worked out a scheme that will allow them to detect and measure particles ten times smaller than the width of a human […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets
Methane, Carbon Monoxide, and Ammonia in Brown Dwarfs and Self-Luminous Giant Planets
We address disequilibrum abundances of some simple molecules in the atmospheres of solar composition brown dwarfs and self-luminous extrasolar giant planets using a kinetics-based 1D atmospheric chemistry model. We employ […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Formation, Habitability, and Detection of Extrasolar Moons
The diversity and quantity of moons in the Solar System suggest a manifold population of natural satellites exist around extrasolar planets. Of peculiar interest from an astrobiological perspective, the number […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Plant Biology
Surface Flux Patterns on Planets in Circumbinary Systems, and Potential for Photosynthesis
Recently, the Kepler Space Telescope has detected several planets in orbit around a close binary star system. These so-called circumbinary planets will experience non-trivial spatial and temporal distributions of radiative […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Press Release, tau Ceti
Debris Disk of Solar Analogue Tau Ceti
Tau Ceti is a nearby, mature G-type star very similar to our Sun, with a massive Kuiper Belt analogue (Greaves et al. 2004) and possible multiplanet system (Tuomi et al. […]