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Progressive astronomical characterization of planet-forming disks and rocky exoplanets highlight the need for increasing interdisciplinary efforts to understand the birth and life cycle of terrestrial worlds in a unified picture. Here, we…
As the only known habitable (and inhabited) planet in the universe, Earth informs our search for life elsewhere. Future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will soon look for life on rocky worlds around Sun-like stars, so…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
The recent discovery of a staggering diversity of planets beyond the Solar System has brought with it a greatly expanded search space for habitable worlds. The Kepler exoplanet survey has revealed that most planets in our interstellar…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
One of the primary open questions of astrobiology is whether there is extant or extinct life elsewhere the Solar System. Implicit in much of this work is that we are looking for microbial or, at best, unintelligent life, even though…
Transiting exoplanets provide access to data to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Long-period transiting planets allow insight into planetary environments similar to the Solar System where, in…
Advancements in our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres, from massive gas giants down to rocky worlds, depend on the constructive challenges between observations and models. We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in…
The unexpected diversity of exoplanets includes a growing number of super-Earth planets, i.e., exoplanets with masses smaller than 10 Earth masses. Unlike the larger exoplanets previously found, these smaller planets are more likely to have…
Exoplanets number in their thousands, and the number is ever increasing with the advent of new surveys and improved instrumentation. One of the most surprising things we have learnt from these discoveries is not that small-rocky planets in…
Today, we know ~4330 exoplanets orbiting their host stars in ~3200 planetary systems. The diversity of these exoplanets is large, and none of the known exoplanets is a twin to any of the solar system planets, nor is any of the known…
Exoplanet atmosphere characterization has seen revolutionary advances over the last few years, providing us with unique insights into atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and planet formation mechanisms. However, true solar system analog planets…
This review focuses on recent results in advancing our understanding of the location and distribution of habitable exo-Earth environments. We first review the qualities that define a habitable planet/moon environment. We extend these…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided the first opportunity to study the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets and estimate their surface conditions. Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars are currently inaccessible with…
Exoplanet science is booming. In 20 years our knowledge has expanded considerably, from the first discovery of a Hot Jupiter, to the detection of a large population of Neptunes and super-Earths, to the first steps toward the…
Understanding the surface and atmospheric conditions of Earth-size, rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars is currently one of the greatest astronomical endeavors. Knowledge of the planetary effective surface…
It is argued that the tight interconnection between biological, climatological, and geophysical factors in the history of the terrestrial biosphere can teach us something of wider importance regarding the general astrobiological evolution…
The characteristics of irradiated solar system planetary atmospheres have been studied for decades, consequently modern planetary science benefits from an exhaustive body of ground- and space-based data. The study of extrasolar planetary…
The varied surfaces and atmospheres of planets make them interesting places to live, explore, and study from afar. Unfortunately, the great distance to exoplanets makes it impossible to resolve their disk with current or near-term…