The discovery: A “super-Earth” ripe for further investigation orbits a small, reddish star that is, by astronomical standards, fairly close to us – only 137 light-years away. The same system […]
imaging
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
Roman Space Telescope Next-Gen Exoplanet-Imaging Technology Tested
A cutting-edge tool to view planets outside our solar system has passed two key tests ahead of its launch as part of the agency’s Roman Space Telescope by 2027.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Role Of Planetary Radius on Atmospheric Escape of Rocky Exoplanets
Large-scale characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres is on the horizon, thereby making it possible in the future to extract their statistical properties.
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Impact events, Meteorites & Asteroids, Press Release
Cosmic Building Blocks Of Life Discovered Through An Electron Microscope
Meteorites are fragments of asteroids which find their way to Earth as shooting stars. These cosmic sediments have frozen the primordial soup from which our solar system emerged – preserving […]
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Observations Of Scattered Light From Exoplanet Atmospheres
Optical phase curves of hot Jupiters can reveal global scattering properties. We implement a Bayesian inference framework for optical phase curves with flux contributions from: reflected light from a potentially […]
Posted inBiochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Cryobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Nanotechnology & SynBio, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release
Cryo-microscopy Reveals Nano-sized Copy Machine Implicated In The Origin Of Life
How the intricate molecular machinery of life arose from simple beginnings has been a long-standing question. Several lines of evidence point towards a primordial “RNA world”, where an “RNA copy […]
Posted inAnalog Studies, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report
Orbital Recon: Seeking Life Signs From Orbit
Editor’s note: We observe new worlds from afar first with telescopes, then spacecraft flybys, then robotic orbital missions, followed perhaps by human missions. How we eventually study the surface of […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Distinguishing Oceans Of Water From Magma On Mini-Neptune K2-18b
Mildly rradiated mini-Neptunes have densities potentially consistent with them hosting substantial liquid water oceans (`Hycean’ planets).
Posted inAstrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
Earth-sized Planet HD 63433 d Has A Lava Hemisphere
The discovery: In a system with two known planets, astronomers spotted something new: a small object transiting across the Sun-sized star. This turned out to be another planet: extra hot […]
Posted inAriel Mission, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
ARES VI: Viability Of One-dimensional Retrieval Models For Transmission Spectroscopy Characterization Of Exo-atmospheres In The Era Of JWST And Ariel
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D.