Daniel Apai's Blog on Exoplanet Exploration and Astrobiology
A few days ago we got a very exciting news: Our Alien Earths team was selected by NASA for a major award within its ICAR (Interdisciplinary Consortium for Astrobiology Research) program! The $6M funding awarded to our Alien Earths team will enable a very exciting and cutting-edge portfolio of research projects for the next five…
A few days ago we posted a new paper on arXiv on the spectacular spiral in the HD 100453 system. The new paper, led by Steward astronomy graduate student Kevin Wagner, settles the question of the origin of the enigmatic spiral arms. This rare two-armed spiral structure was discovered by Kevin – as a first-year…
Can we detect atmospheric biosignatures in the next two decades? Only if we can meet a major, newly-recognized challenge to our studies of exoplanet atmospheric composition. Over the past years the Hubble Space Telescope has proven to be our most powerful tool to probe the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets: the comparison of spectra taken before…
Mikayla Mace is a UA journalism graduate student who is writing a nice series of article on our Earths in Other Solar Systems work. She has just posted a piece on our Genesis Database, the mother of all planet formation simulations, featuring Gijs Mulders and Fred Ciesla. The Genesis Database will help us understand how habitable earth-like…
News and updates on NASA’s Earths in Other Systems Project from PI Daniel Apai. May 10, 2015. Sunday early morning with a coffee in my hand, sitting next to giant blooming Saguaro cacti and citrus trees in Tucson with the spectacular Catalina mountains in the background. Two tiny hummingbirds angrily hover around each other in the air,…