Exoplanets, -moons, -comets – Page 2 – My WordPress Site

Habitability factors at time period from ∼4.1 Ga till end of LHB (left) and current (right) Earth (green), Venus (yellow), and Mars (red). -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Mars, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Venus

Habitability Study of Terrestrial Planets: Application to Venus-like Worlds

by Keith CowingApril 9, 2026April 9, 2026

Skyler Palatnick Holding experimental optics - UCSB

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Nanotechnology & SynBio

Designing Lightweight Optics To Detect Signs Of Life Beyond Our Solar System

by Keith CowingApril 9, 2026April 9, 2026

The transit fitting results for KOI-1300.01. The upper right panel shows the phase-folded and contamination-corrected transit lightcurve for the planet’s circumprimary case. The gray circles are the normalized and contamination corrected flux values. The blue squares are the normalized flux values obtained from binning 800 data points at a time. The red line is the model fit to the data. The lower right panel shows the same information for the circumsecondary case. The upper left panels shows the corner plots from the MCMC sampling in the circumprimary case. The lower left shows the corner plots for the circumsecondary case. -- astro-ph.EP

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

Determining the Host Stars of Planets in Binary Star Systems with Asterodensity Profiling: Investigating the Canonical Radius Gap

by Keith CowingApril 9, 2026April 9, 2026

The left plots show the results of our injection and recovery test into our JWST observation of TOI 700 d, and the right for e.

Analog Studies, Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Stellar Cartography

The JWST Search For Earth-Luna Analogs: Upper Limits On Exomoons And Refined Ephemerides For TOI 700 d And e

by Keith CowingApril 8, 2026April 8, 2026

Evolution of the semimajor axis of a 0.5 M⊕ planet in planetesimal disks with masses of 20 M⊕ (top panel) and 40 M⊕ (bottom panel). The same curves are also shown in a zoomed-in view over the time interval 0–0.5 Myr. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets

Study Of The Migration Of Earth-like Planets In Planetesimal Disks And The Formation Of Debris Disks

by Keith CowingApril 8, 2026April 8, 2026

Secular evolution of the obliquities of TOI-1710 from four-body secular integrations. The semimajor axis of the intermediate companion varies across panels. The obliquity evolution of TOI-1710 A b (red) and the hypothetical intermediate companion X (blue) are shown. The companion mass is fixed at 9 MJ and the initial mutual inclination with the M-dwarf is iXB = 55◦ . The green region marks the 2σ constraints on the obliquity of the observed planet, with the fraction of time spent within this region indicated by fobs. Panels (a) and (c) remain within the allowed window for much less time than panel (b). In all cases, the eccentricity of planet b remains nearly the same as the initial value. -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds

POSEIDON II: The Anti-Aligned Orbit of the Warm Neptune TOI-1710 A b

by Keith CowingApril 7, 2026April 7, 2026

Camera footprint on the sky, including the expected in-flight absolute pointing error. Different colours represent different number of cameras observing the same region of the sky. Grey stars belong to the PIC, but they will not be observed in LOPS2 with the nominal pointing error budget. On the right panel there is a detail of the misalignment of the N-CAMs with respect to the commanded attitude. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronauts and Explorers, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware

Assessment Of PLATO Science Performance

by Keith CowingApril 7, 2026April 7, 2026

Molecular composition of haze samples from the N2-rich/CH4 and H2O-rich/CH4 experiments. Left panels: Very high-resolution mass spectra (m/z 150–800) of haze particles produced from the N2-rich/CH4 and H2O-rich/CH4 experiments, acquired in both positive and negative ionization modes. Assigned CHO, CHN, and CHON species are shown in red, green, and yellow, respectively, while grey data points correspond to mass peaks with no formula matched within the mass accuracy threshold (< 0.0001 Da). For each spectrum, the adjacent pie charts summarize the percentage of molecular formulas and their relative abundances based on summed peak intensities of the assigned organic species. Right panels: Corresponding van Krevelen diagrams combining matched formulas from both ionization modes, shown as H/C vs. N/C and H/C vs. O/C. Each circle represents an assigned formula, where color denotes the degree of unsaturation and marker size scales with peak intensity. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy

Influence Of CO Versus CH4 On Organic Haze Formation In Atmospheres Of Diverse Terrestrial Exoplanets

by Keith CowingApril 7, 2026April 7, 2026

Sky plot of nine cPIC targets that are present in all stellar reference samples. Their PIC names are indicated with labels. -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Missions & Hardware

Planet Finder PLATO Input Catalogs For Technical Calibration And Fine Guidance

by Keith CowingApril 6, 2026April 6, 2026

Artist’s conception of the gas giant planet TOI-5205 b orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star. Image courtesy of Katherine Cain, Carnegie Science.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy

Giant Planet TOI-5205 b Orbits A Small Red Star

by Keith CowingApril 6, 2026April 6, 2026