Related papers: Starshade Rendezvous: Exoplanet Sensitivity and Ob…
The search for habitable conditions beyond Earth is a top priority in astrophysics. The discovery of habitable exoplanets beyond our solar system will require a suite of instruments providing long-term monitoring for detection (e.g. with…
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope's High Latitude Wide Area Survey will have a number of synergies with the Vera Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), particularly for extragalactic star clusters. Understanding the…
The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will carry out a wide-area survey in the near infrared. A key science objective is the measurement of cosmic structure via weak gravitational lensing. Roman data will be undersampled, which…
Upcoming missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, will soon characterize the atmospheres of terrestrial-type exoplanets in habitable zones around cool K- and M-type stars searching for atmospheric biosignatures. Recent…
An outstanding, multi-disciplinary goal of modern science is the study of the diversity of potentially Earth-like planets and the search for life in them. This goal requires a bold new generation of space telescopes, but even the most…
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…
In this paper we present and discuss the criteria for selecting potential target stars suitable for the search for Earth like planets, with a special emphasis on the stellar aspects of habitability. Missions that search for terrestrial…
The Origins Space Telescope (OST) is one of four mission concepts currently being studied by NASA in preparation for the Astrophysics 2020 Decadal Survey. With active cooling (~4 K), OST will be sensitive in mid- to far-IR wavelengths,…
The Roman Space Telescope will be instrumental for characterizing the physical properties of galaxies and understanding their evolution across time. However, a complete view of galaxy star formation activity will only be possible with the…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is an observatory for both wide-field observations and coronagraphy that is scheduled for launch in the mid 2020's. Part of the planned survey is a deep, cadenced field or fields that enable…
This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…
Some million Type Ia supernovae (SN) will be discovered and monitored during upcoming wide area time domain surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). For cosmological use, accurate redshifts are…
With the number of confirmed rocky exoplanets increasing steadily, their characterisation and the search for exoplanetary biospheres is becoming an increasingly urgent issue in astrobiology. We aim to investigate the possibility of…
In this paper we investigate the detectability of a habitable-zone exomoon around various configurations of exoplanetary systems with the Kepler Mission or photometry of approximately equal quality. We calculate both the predicted transit…
X-ray observations of star-planet systems are important to grow our understanding of exoplanets; these observation allow for studies of photoevaporation of the exoplanetary atmosphere, and in some cases even estimations of the size of the…
This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
The current goals of the astrobiology community are focused on developing a framework for the detection of biosignatures, or evidence thereof, on objects inside and outside of our solar system. A fundamental aspect of understanding the…
In addition to planets and other small bodies, stellar systems will likely also host exozodiacal dust, or exozodi. This warm dust primarily resides in or near the habitable zone of a star, and scatters stellar light in visible to NIR…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is capable of delivering an unprecedented all-sky, high-spatial resolution, multi-epoch infrared map to the astronomical community. This opportunity arises in the midst of numerous ground- and…