Related papers: Continuous Habitable Zone Metric for Prioritizing …
Exoplanetary science is increasingly prioritizing efforts toward direct imaging of planetary systems, with emphasis on those that may enable the detection and characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. The recent 2020 Astronomy…
The number of potentially habitable planets continues to increase, but we lack the time and resources to characterize all of them. With $\sim$30 known potentially habitable planets and an ever-growing number of candidate and confirmed…
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be the first space telescope capable of directly imaging Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars to probe their atmospheres for signs of life. Now in its early stages of…
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…
Constraints on the masses of exoplanets directly imaged and characterized by the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) are crucial for categorizing these planets and interpreting their spectra. In particular, achieving a mass measurement with…
Understanding planetary habitability requires a comparative approach that explores the divergent evolutionary outcomes of Earth and Venus. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be uniquely positioned to conduct a statistical and…
The HWO Target Stars and Systems 2025 (TSS25) list is a community-developed catalog of potential stellar targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its survey to directly image Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone. The TSS25…
The planned NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) flagship mission aims to image and spectroscopically characterise 25 Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars. However, one giant planet in the habitable zone can ruin your…
The habitable zone (HZ) is the region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. The classical HZ definition makes a number of assumptions common to the Earth, including assuming that the…
One of the key goals of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to directly image about 25 potentially habitable exoplanets and determine their properties. This challenge will require a large survey of nearby, bright stars -- ~100…
A goal of the future Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to directly image and spectroscopically characterize true Earth-analogs. However, if a large fraction of HWO target stars host unknown dynamically disruptive giant planets in their…
The primary scientific objective of this Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) Science Case Development Document (SCDD) is to measure planetary rotation rates of transiting exoplanets to determine the structure, composition, circulation, and…
Identifying terrestrial planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of other stars is one of the primary goals of ongoing radial velocity and transit exoplanet surveys and proposed future space missions. Most current estimates of the boundaries of…
The habitable zone (HZ) around a star is typically defined as the region where a rocky planet can maintain liquid water on its surface. That definition is appropriate, because this allows for the possibility that carbon-based,…
The detection and characterization of habitable planets around nearby stars persist as one of the foremost objectives in contemporary astrophysics. This work investigates the synergistic integration of astrometric and direct imaging…
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…
The instrument payload of the future Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will span a wide range of wavelengths, including the ultraviolet (UV) region that cannot be easily accessed from the ground (< 350 nm). Along with its primary mission…
What can we tell about exoplanet habitability if currently only the stellar properties, planet radius, and the incoming stellar flux are known? A planet is in the Habitable Zone (HZ) if it harbors liquid water on its surface. The HZ is…
As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…
A major goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to precisely characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres. However, magnetic activity from an exoplanet's host star can complicate measurements of both the stellar and planetary…