Scientists have created the first global temperature map for a planet discovered by TESS, a ‘hot Neptune’ known as LTT 9779b. The first of two just released papers also notes that this is the first spectral atmospheric characterization of a TESS planet. That makes this unusual discovery (lead author Ian Crossfield calls it a “planet that shouldn’t exist”) a useful test case for future work, because the goal of finding the biosignatures of living worlds won’t be achieved without drilling down from inhospitable places like LTT 9779b. The atmospheres of hotter, larger and more readily characterizable planets let us hone our techniques and teach us how to proceed. Crossfield’s reference to the planet’s rarity draws on the fact that so few worlds like this occur close to their host stars, probably because their mass is low enough that the proximity to the star causes atmospheric evaporation. A larger gas giant like one of the ‘hot Jupiters’ we began finding in the beginning of the...

Taking advantage of the fact that most major bodies in our Solar System orbit in roughly the same plane around the Sun, Cornell's Lisa Kaltenegger, working with Joshua Pepper (Lehigh University), has gone on to ponder the implications of the ecliptic plane, traced out as the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun, for exoplanet studies. We're in the realm of transit detection here, because what the authors want to know is not what we see on the ecliptic so much as what extraterrestrial observers would see if they were on the same plane. Says Kaltenegger: "Let's reverse the viewpoint to that of other stars and ask from which vantage point other observers could find Earth as a transiting planet. If observers were out there searching, they would be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our Pale Blue Dot, And we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes." Kaltenegger is director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute and...

The SAINT-EX telescope, operated by NCCR PlanetS, produces a nice resonance as I write this morning. The latter acronym stands for the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, operated jointly by the University of Bern and the University of Geneva. The former, SAINT-EX, identifies a project called Search And characterIsatioN of Transiting EXoplanets, and the team involved explicitly states that they shaped their acronym to invoke Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, legendary aviator and author of, among others, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939), Night Flight (1931) and Flight to Arras (1942). I’ve talked about Saint-Exupéry now and again throughout the history of Centauri Dreams, not only because he was an inspiration for my own foray into flying, but also because for our interstellar purposes he is credited with this inspirational thought: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and...

Gas giant planets in orbits similar to Jupiter's are a tough catch for exoplanet hunters. They're far enough from the star (5 AU in the case of Jupiter) that radial velocity methods are far less sensitive than they would be for star-hugging 'hot Jupiters.' A transit search can spot a Jupiter analogue, but the multi-year wait for the proper alignment is obviously problematic. Still, we'd like to know more, because the gravitational influence of Jupiter may have a crucial role in deflecting asteroids and comets from the inner system, thus protecting terrestrial worlds like ours. If this is the case, then we need to ask whether we just lucked out by having Jupiter where it is, or whether there is some mechanism that makes the presence of a gas giant in a kind of 'protective' outer orbit likely when rocky worlds inhabit the inner system. Enter the computer simulations run by Martin Schlecker at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg. Working with scientists at the...

I'm startled by the findings in a new paper from Dominique Segura-Cox (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics), who argues that based on the evidence of one infant system, we may have planet formation all wrong, at least in terms of when it occurs. The natural assumption is that the star appears first, the planets then accruing mass from within the circumstellar disk. But Segura-Cox and team have found a system in which planet and star seem to be forming all but simultaneously. IRS 63 is a protostar about 470 light years out that is less than half a million years old. Swathed in gas and dust, the star is still gathering mass, but evidence from the disk suggests that the planets have already begun to form. One reason for the surprise factor here is that we've looked at many young stellar systems and their disks, most of them at least one million years old, and the assumption has been that the stars were well along in their own formation process before the planets began to...

We could use a lot more information about flare activity on M-dwarf stars, which can impact planetary atmospheres and surfaces and thus potential habitability. Thus far much has been said on the subject, but what has been lacking are details about the kinds of flares in question. It’s a serious issue given that, in order to be in the liquid water habitable zone, an M-dwarf planet has to orbit in breathtaking proximity to the host star. Flares occur through a star’s magnetic field re-connection, which releases radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. While flares can erode atmospheres and bathe the surface in UV flux, too few flares could actually be detrimental as well, providing as a new paper on the matter suggests, “insufficient surface radiation to power prebiotic chemistry due to the inherent faintness of M-dwarfs in the UV.” The paper is out of the University of North Carolina, measuring a large sample of superflares in search of a clearer picture of their effect. Flares...

I've always loved the notion of 'superhabitability,' which forces us to ask whether, in our search for planets like the Earth, we may in our anthropocentric way be assuming that our own planet is a kind of ideal. Some scientists have been asking for years whether it is possible that the Earth is not as 'habitable' as it might be (see What Makes a Planet 'Superhabitable'?). The question then becomes: What factors would make a planet a better place for life than our own? Now Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University), working with René Heller (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen) and Edward Guinan (Villanova University) runs through the characteristics of superhabitability, which take in planets that are a bit warmer than ours, a bit larger, and somewhat wetter, not to mention those that circle stars that live longer than our G-class Sun. 24 interesting planets emerge, all more than 100 light years out, but none of those so far identified meet all...