Related papers: Where to Find Habitable "Earths" in Circumbinary S…
The Kepler space mission discovered about a dozen planets orbiting around binary stars systems. Most of these circumbinary planets lie near their instability boundaries at about 3 to 5 binary separations. Past attempts to match these final…
We report a mechanism capable of reducing (or increasing) stellar activity in binary stars, thereby potentially enhancing (or destroying) circumbinary habitability. In single stars, stellar aggression towards planetary atmospheres causes…
When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. Multiple planets transiting the same star reveal more: period…
The Kepler Mission is monitoring the brightness of ~150,000 stars searching for evidence of planetary transits. As part of the "Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler" (HEK) project, we report a planetary system with two confirmed planets and one…
Observations of exoplanets and protoplanetary disks show that binary stellar systems can host planets in stable orbits. Given the high binary fraction among stars, the contribution of binary systems to Galactic habitability should be…
We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars.…
The existence of planets orbiting a central binary star system immediately raises questions regarding their formation and dynamical evolution. Recent discoveries of circumbinary planets by the Kepler space telescope has shown that some of…
The aim of our study is to explore the possible existence of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of 55~Cancri, an effort pursued based on detailed orbital stability simulations. This star is known to possess (at least) five planets…
The Alpha Centauri AB system is an attractive one for radial velocity observations to detect potential exoplanets. The high metallicity of both Alpha Centauri A and B suggest that they could have possessed circumstellar discs capable of…
Given the tendency of planets to form in multiples, and the observational evidence in support of the existence of potential planet-hosting stars in binaries or clusters, it is expected that extrasolar terrestrial planes are more likely to…
Locating planets in HabitableZones (HZs) around other stars is a growing field in contemporary astronomy. Since a large percentage of all G-M stars in the solar neighbourhood are expected to be part of binary or multiple stellar systems,…
We study the orbital architecture, physical characteristics of planets, formation and long-term evolution of the Kepler-30 planetary system, detected and announced in 2012 by the KEPLER team. We show that the Kepler-30 system belongs to a…
Some systems of close-in "super-Earths" contain five or more planets on non-resonant but compact and nearly coplanar orbits. The Kepler-11 system is an iconic representative of this class of system. It is challenging to explain their…
We have shown that Earth-mass planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones (HZs) of most of a sample of nine of the 93 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by May 2003. In a preliminary extrapolation…
Using the cumulative catalog of planets detected by the NASA Kepler mission, we reconstruct the intrinsic occurrence of Earth- to Neptune-size (1 - 4$R_{\oplus}$) planets and their distributions with radius and orbital period. We analyze…
At present, because of observational selection effects, we know of no exoplanetary systems with any planetary masses close to that of the Earth. We have therefore used computer models to see whether such planets could be dynamically stable…
We study the dynamical stability of an additional, potentially habitable planet in the HD 47186 planetary system. Two planets are currently known in this system: a "hot Neptune" with a period of 4.08 days and a Saturn-mass planet with a…
We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This population of objects presents several advantages for exoplanet…
Determining planetary habitability is a complex matter, as the interplay between a planet's physical and atmospheric properties with stellar insolation has to be studied in a self consistent manner. Standardized atmospheric models for…
We present a method to confirm the planetary nature of objects in systems with multiple transiting exoplanet candidates. This method involves a Fourier-Domain analysis of the deviations in the transit times from a constant period that…