Related papers: Making Habitable Worlds: Planets Versus Megastruct…

The construction of Dyson spheres, megastructures designed to capture the total radiative output of stars, can be one of the most compelling techno-signature scenarios for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. By considering equilibrium…

We present a photometric detection of the first brightness dips of the unique variable star KIC 8462852 since the end of the Kepler space mission in 2013 May. Our regular photometric surveillance started in October 2015, and a sequence of…

With more and more exoplanets being detected, it is paid closer attention to whether there are lives outside solar system. We try to obtain habitable zones and the probability distribution of terrestrial planets in habitable zones around…

At the dawn of the first discovery of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars in the mid-1990s, few believed that observations of exoplanet atmospheres would ever be possible. After the 2002 Hubble Space Telescope detection of a transiting…

Recent spacecraft observations exploring solar system properties impact standard paradigms of the formation of stars, planets and comets. We stress the unexpected cloud of microscopic dust resulting from the DEEP IMPACT mission, and the…

F-type star--planet systems represent an intriguing case for habitability studies. Although F-type stars spend considerably less time on the main-sequence than G, K, and M-type stars, they still offer a unique set of features, allowing for…

The evidence is mounting that star formation necessarily involves planet formation. We clearly have a vested interest in finding other Earths but a true understanding of planet formation requires completing the census and mapping planetary…

In the near future we will have ground- and space-based telescopes that are designed to observe and characterize Earth-like planets. While attention is focused on exoplanets orbiting main sequence stars, more than 150 exoplanets have…

Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planets, we are confronted with the puzzling diversity of planetary systems. Processes like planet radial migration in gas-disks and planetary orbital instabilities, often invoked to explain the…

The noteworthy four-planet HR 8799 system teeters on the brink of gravitational instability and contains an A-type host star which is characteristic of the progenitors of the majority of known white dwarf planetary system hosts. Gozdziewski…

Analysis of the deepest available images of the sky, obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a large number of candidate high-redshift galaxies. A catalogue of 1,683 objects is presented, with estimated redshifts ranging from $z=0$…

We report on the discovery of a hot Saturn-sized planet (9.916 +/- 0.985 R_earth) around a late F star, EPIC 246865365, observed in Campaign 13 of the K2 mission. We began studying this planet candidate because prior to the release of Gaia…

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observations have revealed a compact multi-planet system around the sixth-magnitude star HR 858 (TIC 178155732, TOI 396), located 32 parsecs away. Three planets, each about twice the size of…

The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…

What is habitability? Can we quantify it? What do we mean under the term habitable or potentially habitable planet? With estimates of the number of planets in our Galaxy alone running into billions, possibly a number greater than the number…

Of the over 200 known extrasolar planets, 14 exhibit transits in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. Spectroscopic observations of the transiting planets can probe the physical conditions of their atmospheres. One such technique…

Intermediate mass planets, from Super-Earth to Neptune-sized bodies, are the most common type of planets in the galaxy. The prevailing theory of planet formation, core-accretion, predicts significantly fewer intermediate-mass giant planets…

Context. The HR 8799 system, hosting four giant planets between a warm and cold debris disc, and an extended dusty tail beyond, serves as an ideal laboratory for studying planetary formation and evolution. The debris discs have been…

Determining whether Earth-like planets are common or rare looms as a touchstone in the question of life in the universe. We searched for Earth-size planets that cross in front of their host stars by examining the brightness measurements of…

The presented work investigates the possible formation of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of the exoplanetary system HD 141399. In this system the HZ is located approximately between the planets c (a = 0.7 au) and d (a = 2.1…