Related papers: Dead Zones of Classical Habitability in Stellar Bi…
After the detection of extrasolar planets in binary and multiple star systems questions arose about their dynamics and habitability. In this study we investigate a five-dimensional parameter space for wide binary stars with a massive planet…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
We perform numerical simulations to study the secular orbital evolution and dynamical structure in the quintuplet planetary system 55 Cancri with the self-consistent orbital solutions by Fischer and coworkers (2008). In the simulations, we…
We study dynamical interactions of star--planet binaries with other single stars. We derive analytical cross sections for all possible outcomes, and confirm them with numerical scattering experiments. We find that a wide mass ratio in the…
Terrestrial planets are more likely to be detected if they orbit M dwarfs due to the favorable planet/star size and mass ratios. However, M dwarf habitable zones are significantly closer to the star than the one around our Sun, which leads…
During the post-main sequence phase of stellar evolution the orbital distance of the habitable zone, which allows for liquid surface water on terrestrial planets, moves out past the system's original frost line, providing an opportunity for…
I list the 16 planetary nebulae (PNe) known to contain close-binary nuclei, and show that the nebulae generally have axisymmetric structures, including elliptical, bipolar, or ring morphologies. The orbital periods range from 2.7 hr to 16…
Searches for planets in close binary systems explore the degree to which stellar multiplicity inhibits or promotes planet formation. There is a degeneracy between planet formation models when only systems with single stars are…
High obliquity planets represent potentially extreme limits of terrestrial climate, as they exhibit large seasonality, a reversed annual-mean pole-to-equator gradient of stellar heating, and novel cryospheres. A suite of 3-D global climate…
The habitable zone is the region around a star where standing bodies of liquid water can be stable on a planetary surface. Its width is often assumed to be dictated by the efficiency of the carbonate-silicate cycle, which has maintained…
Many exoplanets are discovered in binary star systems in internal or in circumbinary orbits. Whether the planet can be habitable or not depends on the possibility to maintain liquid water on its surface, and therefore on the luminosity of…
Future space missions, TPF and Darwin will focus on searches of signatures of life on extrasolar planets. In this paper we look for model independ definition of the habitable zone. It will be shown that the radius of the habitable sphere…
Context. The presence of a stellar companion can strongly influence the architecture and long-term stability of planetary systems. Motivated by the discovery of exoplanets exhibiting extremely high eccentricities (e >= 0.8) in systems with…
When searching for inhabited exoplanets, understanding the boundaries of the habitable zone around the parent star is key. If life can strongly influence its global environment, then we would expect the boundaries of the habitable zone to…
In the solar neighborhood, where the typical relaxation timescale is larger than the cosmic age, at least 10\% to 15\% of Sun-like stars have planetary systems with Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, dense star clusters, charactered by…
About half of all known stellar systems with Sun-like stars consist of two or more stars, significantly affecting the orbital stability of any planet in these systems. Here we study the onset of instability for an Earth-type planet that is…
Discoveries of extrasolar planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of their parent star lead to questions about the habitability of massive moons orbiting planets in the HZ. Around low-mass stars, the HZ is much closer to the star than for…
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…
We study the dynamical stability of planetary systems consisting of one hypothetical terrestrial mass planet ($1 $ or $10 \mearth$) and one massive planet ($10 \mearth - 10 \mjup$). We consider masses and orbits that cover the range of…
In exoplanet research, the focus is increasingly on identifying Earth analogs, planets similar in density and habitability potential. As the number of rocky exoplanets grows, parallel discussions have emerged on system architectures and…