CPP Study Helps Narrow Search for Habitable Worlds
NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), slated for launch in the 2040s, will be the first specifically designed to search for signs of life on planets orbiting stars in other solar systems.
Breanna Binder, associate professor of physics and astronomy, is the lead author of a new study that helps to narrow the list of possible target stellar systems for Habitable Worlds by analyzing stellar X-ray observation data already collected for nearby stars.
The study, “X-Ray Emission of Nearby Low-mass and Sunlike Stars with Directly Imageable Habitable Zones,” was published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements last week. Habitable zones are the distance from a star at which liquid water could exist on orbiting planets.
“Time on the telescopes is very, very precious, and we need to pick the best targets,” said Binder. “Part of that conversation is knowing what the high energy environment is like. If a host star is blasting out X-rays, then it may have destroyed a planet’s atmosphere, and Habitable Worlds won’t have any atmosphere to look at.”
To narrow the list of 229 nearby stellar systems that HWO could sample, the team searched for archival X-ray and radiation observations on those systems from the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories. Researchers collected and uniformly analyzed data for 57 nearby stellar systems with habitable zones that could be directly imageable with the next generation telescopes.
After examining the brightness of the stars in the X-ray and characterizing their variability (how often they flared and how much energy was discharged) the team identified 29 stars with radiation levels in their habitable zones similar to or less than what the Earth experiences from our Sun. Any planets in those zones could have conditions hospitable to life.
According to a story on Space.com, “The research is paving the way for future discoveries of potentially habitable exoplanets, bringing us closer to answering the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.”
The results of the study were presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin.
About the photo: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this imagery of an X1.8 solar flare – as seen in the bright flash in the center – on Oct. 08, 2024. The footage shows from 9:15 to 10:18 p.m. EDT in a blend of 171, 304, and 131 Angstrom light, subsets of extreme ultraviolet light. This cropped version is slowed to 1/3 speed. Credit: NASA/SDO