The habitable zone (HZ) is defined as the range of distances from a host star within which liquid water, a key requirement for life, may exist at a planet’s surface. […]
Habitable Zone
Posted inBarnard's Star, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Press Release
Habitable Zone Planet Finder Enables Discoveries Around Cool Stars
A new astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State-led team of scientists provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from nearby stars, allowing astronomers to detect planets […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Number of Habitable Planets
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Ocean Dynamics and the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone for Tidally Locked Terrestrial Planets
Recent studies have shown that ocean dynamics can have a significant warming effect on the permanent night sides of 1 to 1 tidally locked terrestrial exoplanets with Earth-like atmospheres and […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
The Implications of Clustered Star formation For (proto)planetary Systems and Habitability
Star formation is spatially clustered across a range of environments, from dense stellar clusters to unbound associations. As a result, radiative or dynamical interactions with neighbouring stars disrupt (proto)planetary systems […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Climate Sensitivity to Ozone and its Relevance on the Habitability of Earth-like Planets
Atmospheric ozone plays an important role on the temperature structure of the atmosphere. However, it has not been included in previous studies on the effect of an increasing solar radiation […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
The Oxyometer: A Novel Instrument Concept for Characterizing Exoplanet Atmospheres
With TESS and ground-based surveys searching for rocky exoplanets around cooler, nearby stars, the number of Earth-sized exoplanets that are well-suited for atmospheric follow-up studies will increase significantly. For atmospheric […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Atmospheric Circulation and Climate of Terrestrial Planets Orbiting Sun-like and M-dwarf Stars
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
UV Surface Environments and Atmospheres of Earth-like Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
An Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf would be exposed to different UV environments than Earth, influencing both its atmospheric photochemistry and UV surface environment. Using a coupled 1D climate-photochemistry […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
A More Comprehensive Habitable Zone For Finding Life On Other Planets
The habitable zone (HZ) is the circular region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. Space missions employ the HZ […]