The goal of this workshop is to provide a common platform for scientists working in the fields of star- and planet formation, exo-planets, astrobiology, and planetary research in general. Most importantly, this workshop is aimed at stimulating and intensifying the dialogue between researchers using various approaches, observations, theory, and laboratory studies. Continua a leggere Planet Formation and Evolution 2014
Archivi tag: extrasolar planets
Sagan Summer Workshop 2014
The 2014 Sagan Summer Workshop will be held on the campus of Caltech from July 21-25, 2014. The workshop will explore current techniques and technology used to detect and image exoplanets and debris disks, as well as the underlying science driving the modeling of exoplanetary atmospheres and disk structure. A number of ground-based surveys are presently underway using advanced coronagraphs and Extreme Adaptive Optics on 5-10 m telescopes, while new algorithms are being used to dig deeper in space-based datasets. This year’s focus on coronagraphy is particularly timely with the high level of ExEp activity regarding a coronagraph for the WFIRST/AFTA telescope. Introducing the science and technology of the AFTA coronagraph to graduate students and postdocs will be an important goal of the workshop. Continua a leggere Sagan Summer Workshop 2014
The X-ray Universe
The XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre is organising a major astrophysical symposium from Monday 16th to Thursday 19th of June 2014 in Dublin, Ireland. The symposium is the fourth international meeting in the series “The X-ray Universe”. The intention is to gather a general collection of research in high energy astrophysics. The symposium will provide a showcase for results, discoveries and expectations from current and future X-ray missions. Continua a leggere The X-ray Universe
Beta Pictoris b, measured the rotation rate of the exoplanet
Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to have a day that lasts only eight hours. This is much quicker than any planet in the Solar System, its equator is moving at almost 100.000 kilometres per hour. This new result extends the relation between mass and rotation seen in the Solar System to exoplanets. Similar techniques will allow astronomers to map exoplanets in detail in the future with the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
More at ESO: Length of Exoplanet Day Measured for First Time
Exomoons could host alien life too
Although more than 1.000 exoplanets have been discovered since the first one was found in 1995, only a handful of those are thought to be habitable, at least by life as we know it. New research shows that exomoons, too, could provide habitable environments. Although we are yet to find exomoons, we have good reasons to believe that there should be many, even more than exoplanets.
More at The Conversation: Move over exoplanets, exomoons may harbour life too
arXiv: The Effect of Planetary Illumination on Climate Modelling of Earthlike Exomoons
Earth-like planets could not be the right places for life
E’ quanto afferma l’astrofisico René Heller del McMaster’s Origins Institute secondo il quale la vita extraterrestre potrebbe essere presente su un’altra categoria di pianeti molto diversi da quelli terrestri che non sarebbero, così, il posto ideale dove può emergere la vita, almeno come noi la conosciamo. Questi mondi alieni detti “super abitabili” avrebbero una massa due o tre volte superiore rispetto a quella del nostro pianeta e potrebbero essere decisamente più vecchi in termini di età.
“The Earth just scrapes the inner edge of the solar system’s habitable zone, the area in which temperatures allow Earth-like planets to have liquid surface water”, says Heller. “So from this perspective, Earth is only marginally habitable. That led us to ask: could there be more hospitable environments for life on terrestrial planets?” Heller and co-author John Armstrong of Weber State University describe superhabitable planets in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology. In it, they outline some of the characteristics such planets might have. They include many, shallower bodies of water (rather than a few large oceans), a more reliable global “thermostat” that impedes ice ages, and a magnetic shield, to protect the planet from cosmic radiation.
Heller says the theory means astronomers should be aiming their telescopes at planets that have so far not garnered much attention in the search for extraterrestrial life.
“We propose a shift in focus”, he says. “We want to prioritize future searches for inhabited planets. We’re saying ‘Don’t just focus on the most Earth-like planets if you really want to find life.’” But is the discussion about which planets to look at even worth having? How likely are we ever to find life on another planet? “Statistically speaking, I would say it’s very unlikely that there is nothing out there”, says Heller. “For the first time in history, we have the ability, both technical and intellectual, to find and classify potentially inhabited planets. It’s just a matter of how we spend our observation time”. Heller expects the paper to serve as a launching point for a debate about superhabitability. He says it may take some time for the scientific community to come around to the theory. “When you follow a certain pattern for decades, it can be hard to change your mind”.
McMaster University: Looking for life in all the wrong places arXiv: Superhabitable Worlds
KASC-6: A new era of stellar astrophysics with Kepler
KASC-6, the 6th Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium Conference, will take place in Sydney, Australia, in June 2013. It will be the first KASC conference after all Kepler data became public in 2012 — marking a new era in science with Kepler. We therefore welcome everyone to attend KASC-6, both members and non-members of KASC, who are interested in the stellar astrophysics that we can investigate with Kepler data. The main themes of the conference will be Stellar structure and evolution using asteroseismology, Stellar activity and rotation, Binary stars, and connections to Extrasolar planets. This conference offers great opportunities to establish new collaborations in these scientific fields, which are currently experiencing dramatic progress driven by the vast amounts of exquisite photometric data from space missions like Kepler.
Kepler’s exoworlds as targets for SETI
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to five small planets around a slightly smaller star than our Sun (post). Two of them are super-Earth planets, most likely made of rock or ice mixed with rock, which are located in the habitable zone of their host star. This discovery is providing a target for the SETI search, since if life has thrived on these worlds and reached a point where civilization has developed complex technology, it may be detectable.
When the NASA Kepler mission was launched on March 9, 2007, the Delta II rocket was carrying the hope of a large community of scientists who dedicate their work to studying extra-solar planets, planets in orbit around other stars. The Kepler mission’s main scientific objective is exploration of the structure and diversity of planetary systems. It accomplishes this goal by staring almost constantly at a large field composed of about 150,000 stars to detect small dips in brightness due to the transits of a planet. Kepler has already been a successful NASA mission with the discovery of 2,740 planet candidates with estimated sizes from Mercury to larger than Jupiter. A fifth of these planet candidates are also called “super-Earths”, a new class of planets, without analog in our solar system, with a radius between 1.25 to 2 times the radius of our planet. The Kepler team has announced the discovery of a multiple planet system, composed of 5 Earth-sized and super-Earth planets orbiting a K-type star. The detection of these planets was indirect since Kepler astronomers observed the attenuation of the host star’s brightness due to the passage of a planet in the line of sight, and not the planets themselves. The authenticity of this multiple planet system was confirmed by a statistical analysis based on previous detections of multiple planets by Kepler. “By estimating the rate of false-positives due the remote possibility of additional planet-hosting stars in the photometric aperture we have strong confidence that we have discovered two genuine transiting super-Earth planets in the habitable zone of their host star. Such calculations are only possible because of the thousands of additional transiting extrasolar planets that Kepler has discovered” said Jason Rowe, Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and co-author of the work. The outermost planet, named Kepler-62f (radius about 1.4 times Earth’s radius and a period of 267 Earth days) is located in the habitable zone of the star, a region around the star where a rocky planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth could host liquid water on its surface. The team expanded the definition of the habitable zone by taking into account the evolution of the brightness of the host star. Their calculations suggest that Kepler-62e (radius about 1.6 times Earth’s radius and a period of 122 Earth days) was also in the habitable zone so that liquid water could have existed on its surface, too. Similar to Venus and Mars that are believed to have lost their surface water 1 billion years and 3.8 billion years ago respectively, before our sun was more luminous, the host star’s habitable zone was broader in the past. The Kepler team’s calculations suggest that Kepler-62e (radius about 1.6 times Earth’s radius and a period of 122 Earth days) is also in the habitable zone so that liquid water could exist on its surface, too. “These discoveries move us farther down the road to discovering planets similar to Earth. While we don’t know if Kepler-62e and f are rocky or whether they have liquid water pooling on their surfaces, their existence shows that the incidence of small worlds in the habitable zone of sun-like stars is high. Thus we can look forward to the discovery and detailed characterization of Earth’s cousins in the years and decades to come by future missions and telescopes”, said Jon Jenkins Senior Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and also co-author of the work. Both Goldilocks planets’ masses remain unknown since they are too small to produce detectable gravitational effects on the host star and between themselves. However, considering a lower upper limit for their mass and the age of the star, estimated to be 7 billion years, the team suggests that both planets are solid and either made of a dry rocky material, like Earth, or a large body of water surrounding a core of iron and rock (a water world). Kepler discoveries are an amazing opportunity to focus the search for technosignatures conducted at the Center for SETI Research led by Gerry Harp. Kepler provides the detection of exoworlds that could host water on their surfaces and potentially life. Unfortunately, the planets of the Kepler-62 system are too distant (850 light-years from Earth) to be fully characterized, and no direct measurement of their atmospheric composition is possible with current technologies. “Since December of 2011, the SonATA program to search for extraterrestrial intelligence with the Allen Telescope Array has been focusing on the Kepler exoplanet candidates and especially those planets expected to be within the “Habitable Zone” of their stars. Our surveys improve on previous, generally narrowband SETI by covering the radio frequency range where Earth’s atmosphere is most transparent, including many frequencies never before observed. We expect to complete a meaningful survey of these stars in less than 1 year — be sure to check back soon“, says Gerry Harp, Director of the Center for SETI Research.
SETI: Has Kepler Found Ideal SETI-target Planets? See also: Kepler’s Tally of Planets
AstronomicaMens 