[Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics] Liquid water is considered essential for life. Surprisingly, however, stable conditions that are conducive to life could exist far from any sun.
Habitable Zone
ScienceKind: The Search for Alien Megastructures: Ann Marie Cody
Speaker: Ann Marie Cody, research scientist, SETI Institute Carl Sagan Center When: Wednesday 9 December 2026, 9:30am Pacific, 12:30pm Eastern, 5:30pm UK Where: online, Zoom Webinars. Free. Register at www.sciencekind.com […]
ScienceKind: The Search for another Earth: Ravi Kumar Kopparapu
Speaker: Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, planetary scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center When: Wednesday 28 October 2026, 9:30am Pacific, 12:30pm Eastern, 4:30pm UK (the UK clocks change a week before the […]
![[Left]: A concept raytrace showing the IFS, with just the FUV channels shown. The NUV channels take the zero-order from each FUV grating and reflect it towards the IFS fold mirror (on either side) into a similar format NUV IFS (see Haughton et al., 2026 for a depiction of the INFUSE design that this IFS is based on13). The IFS assembly is forward (out of the page) from the MOS at the focal plane, with the IFS fold mirror canted slightly to move the slicer, gratings, and detectors over 0.7 meters from the MOS optical path. [Right]: The slicer-based IFS operates by reflecting portions of the image plane to different gratings, which then focus a spectrogram to a unique portion of the detector. In essence, each reflective slice operates like a long-slit spectrograph, with the slicer geometry separating the multi-slit spectrograph to avoid spectral confusion.-- astro-ph.IM](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/An-Ultraviolet.png?resize=1200%2C563&ssl=1)
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes
An Ultraviolet Instrument On The Habitable Worlds Observatory: Considerations and Capability Trades On The Multi-Object, Integral-field, and High-resolution Modes Of A Potential UVI
[astro-ph.IM] The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA’s next-generation astrophysics platform, delivering transformative capability in the search for life and study of the origins of the universe.
![A heterotrophic ecosystem enabled by fermentation on Enceladus. [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Fermentation.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inEnceladus
Fermentation Heterotrophy Can Reproduce Enceladus’s H2 And CH4 Under Limited Serpentinization
[astro-ph.EP] Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is a prime target in the search for life beyond Earth. Abundant H2 and CH4 in Enceladus’s south-polar plume have been shown to be consistent […]
![Overview of the thermodynamic modeling workflow used in this study and Madan and Pearce (2025). -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Prebiotic-Chemistry.png?resize=1200%2C714&ssl=1)
Posted inTitan
Prebiotic Chemistry In Selk Crater on Titan
[astro-ph.EP] Saturn’s moon Titan is a prime destination for investigating prebiotic chemistry beyond Earth, particularly at impact crater sites where transient liquid water may have enabled aqueous reactions between organic […]
![Simulated climates and observables for CO2-rich planets near the outer edge of the habitable zone. The illustration on the right depicts a potentially habitable world orbiting a Sun-like star. The teal point in the lower left section of the panel marks the orbital location of such a planet within the OHZ, and the corresponding reflected light spectrum that could be observed via direct imaging is shown in teal in the middle, left section of the panel. The upper left section of the panel shows an illustration of the same planet in a globally frozen state located just beyond the habitable zone. Its orbital position (lower left) and reflected light spectrum (middle) are shown in white. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/High-CO2.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inHabitable Zones
High-CO2 Climates And Observables In The Outer Habitable Zone
[astro-ph.EP] The habitable zone (HZ) is a fundamental concept used to guide our search for temperate exoplanets with stable surface liquid water that would sustain remotely detectable biosignatures.
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Large Planets Ruled Out After 70 Ophiuchi AB Binary System Search
[University of Michigan] New research led by the University of Michigan is helping set the stage for future observatories to characterize rocky planets outside our solar system, planets that could […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
The NEID Earth Twin Survey. VI. Discovery Of A Low-Mass Planet Orbiting HD 126053 And RV Signals Near The Rotation Periods Of HD 168009 and HD 10780
[astro-ph.EP] Extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) spectrographs are making strides in extending the limits of radial velocity exoplanet detection.
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
An Earth-like Planet With Two Suns?
[UC Riverside] A nearby star system with two suns could potentially support an Earth-sized planet in a region where liquid water could exist, according to a new paper examining the […]