Related papers: Light and Life: Exotic Photosynthesis in Binary St…
The study of how photosynthetic organisms convert light offers insight not only into nature's evolutionary process, but may also give clues as to how best to design and manipulate artificial photosynthetic systems -- and also how far we can…
The dynamical influence of binary companions is expected to profoundly influence planetary systems. However, the difficulty of identifying planets in binary systems has left the magnitude of this effect uncertain; despite numerous…
It is argued that apart from the well known dependence of the Am phenomenon on the mass, age (effective temperature, gravity) and rotation there is also a complex dependence on the orbital parameters in binary systems. This is why the…
An Earth-like extra-solar planet emits light which is many orders of magnitude fainter than that of the parent star. We propose a method of identifying bio-signature spectral lines in light from known extra-solar planets based on Fourier…
With the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets and a potentially huge number of Earth-like planets waiting to be discovered, the conditions for their habitability have become a focal point in exoplanetary research. The classical picture of…
Surveys of nearby field stars indicate that stellar binaries are common, yet little is known about the effects that these companions may have on planet formation and evolution. The Friends of Hot Jupiters project uses three complementary…
Young stars are frequently observed to host circumstellar disks, within which their attendant planetary systems are formed. Scattered light imaging of these proto-planetary disks reveals a rich variety of structures including spirals, gaps…
The unparalleled photometric data obtained by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has led to improved understanding of red-giant stars and binary stars. We discuss the characterization of known eccentric system, containing a solar-like…
The recent detection of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Trappist-1 and many other nearby M-type stars has led to speculations, whether liquid water and life actually exist on these planets. To a large extent,…
The closest potentially habitable worlds outside our Solar system orbit a different kind of star than our Sun: smaller red dwarf stars. Such stars can flare frequently, bombarding their planets with biologically damaging high-energy UV…
Upcoming NASA astrophysics missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope will search for signs of life on planets transiting nearby stars. Doing so will require co-adding dozens of transmission spectra to build up sufficient signal to…
As of late 2025 there are about 70 exoplanets that meet the formal criterion of having equilibrium temperatures allowing the presence of liquid water and about 50 of them orbit M-stars, known for their strong chromospheric activity. Most of…
Close binary stars are binary stars where the component stars are close enough such that they can exchange mass and/or energy. They are subdivided into semi-detached, overcontact or ellipsoidal binary stars. A challenging problem in the…
Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
Massive hot stars produce dense ultraviolet (UV) photon fields in their surroundings. If a very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emitter is located close to the star, then gamma-rays are absorbed in the stellar photon field, creating secondary…
Several binary systems have been detected at High Energy (HE, E > 100 MeV) and/or Very High Energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma rays. Some of them are X-ray binaries in which accretion feeds relativistic radio jets and powers the non-thermal…
The INTEGRAL satellite has revealed a major population of supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries in our Galaxy, revolutionizing our understanding of binary systems and their evolution. This population, constituted of a compact object orbiting…
Stellar models of massive single stars are still plagued by major uncertainties. Testing and calibrating against observations is essential for their reliability. For this purpose one preferably uses observed stars that have never…