Most Habitable Stars

In our search for new planets in the universe, which has spanned roughly 30 years we have learned a lot. Certain stars are just more habitable for life! Sun like Stars are classified and Type G Stars; stars that are less massive and a bit cooler are Type K Stars; while stars that are dimmer viable and cooler are red Dwarfs. A stars habitable zone defines the region where liquid water and life can exist around a given star. For a larger star the region allows much more space that is habitable, while a smaller star has a smaller habitable zone. In addition, A M red dwarf can have a life span of up to 1oo billion years and a K dwarf will similarly have a life span of up to 45 billion years. 

However, the amount of harmful radiation from different stars is estimated to be up to 500 times more intense for the habitable zone corresponding to a red dwarf star than a Type G Star like our sun, leaving some uncertainties in our estimation for the capability of life to thrive there. Being that a Type G Star's habitable zone is so close to it's parent star any planet there would be inflicted with great amounts of X-Ray and UV radiation from the star and being too close also means that planets would be stripped of water and baked until dry. Scientists are now less enthusiastic about the odds of finding life around Type M Red Dwarfs because of this.

A Type K Star may only have up to 25 times the amount of harmful radiation than our sun also. Red dwarfs actually make most of the Milky Ways Star Population with about 73% of stars being cooler red dwarfs. K dwarfs are estimated to make up about 13%.

As our own sun A Type G Star has foster life to flourish on Earth, these types of stars also are a great place to start looking for life in the universe as well. Our own sun is actually about halfway through it's lifespan; whereas a Type K Star would typically survive four times longer than our sun increasing the odds that life could evolve there. Earth will likely be uninhabitable within the next 1 to 2 billion years as stars like our sun slowly over time grow hotter and expand. This effect would push earth closer to the inner edge of it's habitable zone; having adverse effects such as the burning off earth's atmospheres and oceans, leaving earth looking much more like mars in the future. At the end of the earth's life cycle it will swell up and become a red giant star and swallow the inner planets entirely. Realistically, while we still have a great many years.. someday mankind will have to move to the stars to survive.

According to mathematical estimates of longevity and habituality Type K Stars would be the next best place to look for life supporting habitable zones. These slightly cooler Type K Stars are also three times as populous in our own Milky Way Galaxy. More than 1,000 type stars lie within 100 light years of our own sun. Some of the most famous Type K stars found to host planets are Kepler-442, Tua Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani. The stars Tua Ceti and Epsilon Eridani were also targets of the 1950's Project Ozma which attempted to find radio transmissions from extraterrestrial civilizations.

Kepler-442 is an extraordinary target because of it's K5V Star classification, being on the hot side of the K Spectrum it also hosts a solid rocky planets roughly two times the mass of Earth. Being one of Kepler's newly found super earths orbiting a Goldilocks Star perfect for life to evolve.

Kepler 442 also known as KIC 4138008 is located roughly 1200 light years away from Earth in the Constellation of Lyra, putting it beyond our immediate limitations for space travel. Discovered in The first Kepler mission this system is a gem because there are many complications to detect an earth sized planets via transit method.

If you would like to have a look for yourself follow these instructions to view Kepler 442 in the night sky.

Download Google Earth Pro for desktop

Load the program

Enter Sky mode (click the saturn icon)

Follow this link and copy the J200 coordinates

19 01 27.979 +39 16 48.29

Plug in coordinates in search box and Enjoy!

You will land in the Constellation of Lyra right next to Vega.

Sample of Google Earth Pro Keyhole Data

Exoplanet Hunting

in 2020 NASA is continuing the search for new exoplanets like earth, maybe even life. In 2009 they made History with the first time opportunity for citizens to work with NASA and Kepler Mission survey data. Volunteers aided the search to find other planets like earth. The Opportunity helped their team look a bit more fined tune into extensive databases Kepler and Kepler's New Light Data. Dubbed the Kepler Mission and K2. Now Continuing the tradition TESS Data is available for amateur scientists to work with.

Your efforts are welcomed because of the overwhelming amount of data and the fact that people are much more likely to discover planets that the technology used sometimes may overlook. Many discoveries have already happened, citizens scientists are welcomed to work with NASA and PlanetHunters.org

A Star Gazer's Guide to the Milky Way

Credit: ESA

A Star Gazer's Guide to the Milky Way

Gaia Sky is a free and open source software package that can guide your through your travels in the stars.

Gaia Sky serves as a visualization tool you can use to explore our very own solar system, the milky way galaxy and beyond. Once you have downloaded and installed this software package you can move freely throughout the cosmos guided by many different star data sets. This software package also comes planetarium ready being capable of producing videos for full dome systems, it can also run in 360 mode with spherical, cylindrical and hammer projections. You can also observe the Gaia satellite while in orbit around earth to learn how it moves and it's altitude and positions in the sky.



Gaia sky contains a simulation of our own Solar System complete with all the planets, dwarf planets, some of the satellites, moons, asteroids, locations, trajectories and more. If has the capability to add levels of detail based views into different Gaia release data sets such as: Gaia DR2, Gaia Sky Catalogues and different sections dedicated to parallax relative errors, each data set ranges from millions to hundreds of millions of stars available and classified by Gaia. Included also is additional astronomical and cosmological data such as star clusters (MWSC), nearby galaxies (NGB), and distant galaxies and quasars (SDSS).

This wonderful edition to twenty first century computing Gaia Sky is designed for astronomy fans and professional enthusiasts, it was developed in 2014 directly into the framework of the data processing consortium of ESA's Gaia Cornerstone Astrometry Mission. The special focus of this project is to deliver visualization of the Gaia catalogue and to provide further support and aid of related outreach materials. Additionally, Gaia sky has a wide range of other scientific applications ranging from purely recreational to scientific exploration.



Completely flexible by design, you can navigate the galaxy with your own controllers and gamepads. It has 6 stereoscopic modes with which you can select Anaglyphic (red cam), VR Headset, 3DTV, Cross Eye and Parallel View. You can implement SAMP commands to interoperate with SAMP-ready software like Topcat and Aladdin. Gaia is also compatible if you want to upload your own data sets in TGAS, NGB, SDSS, MWSC, FITS, CSV and many other formats. Gaia is also scriptable and extendable because it is compatible with Python Scripting to specialize and extend performance capabilities built to suit.

Functioning as a visualization engine Gaia Sky represents the multi-dimensional nature of our universe and data collected with positions, parallaxes, proper motions of objects, tangential velocities projected throughout the sky, radial velocities if available, magnitudes of objects and even colors. the software package includes a stereoscopic mode with five 3D properties, a planetarium mode and a 360 panorama mode with three different projections. In this software package you will find a scripting engine that is built-in with a comprehensive API, a Gaia Sky VR spinoff is also in the works and is now in functional state.



Gaia Sky Software is available for Linux, macOS and Windows.

The minimum system requirements for version 2.0.0 are the following:

CPU: Intel core i5 3rd generation
GPU: Intel HD 4000, Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, Radeon HD 5670 / 1 GB VRAM / OpenGL 3.0
RAM: 4+ GB RAM
Disk: 1 GB of free space


Credit: ESA

The September 2016 release

A new all sky star catalog of our very own favorite galaxy the Milky Way has been released by Gaia. This mission lead by ESA started its scientific work in July 2014. This first release is based on data collected during its first 14 months of scanning the sky.

"Today's release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that awaits us and how that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our galaxy."

Will have information about positions (α, δ) and G magnitudes for all stars with acceptable formal standard errors on positions. Positions and individual uncertainties are computed using a generic prior and bayes' rule detailed in the "Gaia astrometry for stars with too few observations. A Bayesian approach" For this release approximately 90% of the sky will be covered.

"The beautiful map we are publishing today shows the density of stars measured by Gaia across the entire sky, and confirms that it collected superb data during its first year of operations” says Timo Prusti Gaia project scientist at ESA.

At the beginning of the routine phase a special scanning mode repeatedly covering the ecliptic poles on every spin was executed for calibration purposes. Photometric data of RR Lyrae and Cepheid Variable Stars including these high-cadence measurements will be released. The five parameter astrometric solution positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for stars in common between the Tycho 2 Catalog and Gaia will be released. The catalog is based on the Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution.


Future releases may Include:

Five parameter astrometric solution of objects with single star behavior will be released under the assumption that at least 90% of the sky can be covered. Integrated BP/RP photometry, with appropriate standard errors for sources where basic astrophysical parameter estimation has been verified. Mean radial velocities for objects showing no radial velocity variation and for which an adequate synthetic template could be selected, under the assumption that this can be done for 90% of the bright stars on the sky.

Orbital solutions, together with the system radial velocity and five parameter astrometric solutions, for binary's having periods between 2 months and 75% of the observing time will be released. Object classification and astrophysical parameters, together with BP/RP spectra and/or RVS spectra they are based on will be released for spectroscopically and photometrically well behaved objects. Mean radial velocities will be released for those stars not showing variability and with available atmospheric parameter estimates.

Variable star classification will be released together with the epoch photometry used for the stars. Solar system results will be released with preliminary orbital solutions and individual epoch observations. Non single star catalogs will be released. Full astrometric, photometric and radial velocity catalogs will also be released. All available variable star and non single star solutions. Source classification plus multiple astrophysical parameters for stars, unresolved binaries, galaxies, and quasars. Some parameters may not be available for fainter stars.

The Search For New Worlds - NASA's Kepler Mission

NASA's Kepler Mission
The Search For New Worlds

Ever since the beginning of time mankind has gazed upon the stars with all the beauty of the heavens, wondering if we are truly alone on this sanctuary we call earth.

Never before have we possessed the technology and resources to answer this question before. NASA's Kepler Mission has newly illuminated our universe, we now understand that planetary and star systems like our own exist everywhere in the universe.

Our interpretation of the results will ultimately define how we perceive habitable zones and the many types of harmonic and chaotic planetary star systems that exist in our universe. We will learn more about universal elemental abundances, atmospheric compositions and conditions for life. Here we will find the future of planetary sciences.

The Kepler Mission provided researchers with over 3 years of continuous light data for over 503,506 stars in  our neighboring Lyrae, Draco and Cygnus star constellations. Someday we may even understand that exoplanets exist more commonly in the universe than stars. 

Results from the Kepler Mission have indicated that many more massive planets were found around massive stars. Information gathered allows analysis of the moving dynamics of star systems, atmospheric structures and with this information we can create planetary profiles.

To date all known planets have been discovered from a variety of techniques including transit surveys, radial velocities, gravitational lenses, interactions, infrared heat signatures, and visual confirmations.

From these we see giant gas planets, mini Neptune's, water worlds and many exotic super earth like planets. We have also find that binary and trinary star systems are abundant with planets as well, these systems may exist more frequently that single stars like our sun!



Binary and Trinary star systems tend to have large transit timing variations due to many gravitational interactions. Planets revealing transit timing variations hint the presence of other planets.

Planetary and star systems exhibit strong resonance via conservation of angular momentum; the key foundation of moving dynamics and star system harmonics. Information can be extracted revealing the details of moving dynamics, Keplerian Motion, orbital timings, planet to planet interactions, light travel time and spectral analysis.

A Habitable Zone is the area around a star where liquid water may exist, This defines whether or not a planet may be hospitable to life as we know it.

The inner edge or the hot zone is typically up to 340 Kelvins where water vapor dramatically increases and creates strong greenhouse atmospheric conditions. At 373 Kelvins Oceans evaporate entirely on earth like planetary models.



The opposite edge of the habitable zone is 273 Kelvins where water freezes. This is also about 1.7 AU from a sun-like star because planetary atmospheres become opaque to stellar radiation. In addition short period planets with non zero eccentricity hint the presence of other low mass planets. Internal planetary structures may be probed if 2 planets exist.

Exploring the results of the Kepler Mission below estimates now that up to %30 of stars may harbor earthlike planets that our technology may not be easily able to detect yet; we however do find many larger super-earth like planets. Our results also indicate that older red dwarf stars tend to be deficient of gas planets. Hot Jupiter's were missing from Kepler results possibly due to reflectivity. Hot Neptune's and super earths have been found most frequently.


Confirmed Planets 4,197

Detected By Kepler 2,622

Kepler Candidates 2418

Detected By K2 409

K2 Candidates 889

TESS Confirmed 66

TESS Candidates 2120

Ice Giants 1,250

Gas Planets 1,001

Super Earths 776

Terrestrial 348

By Detection Method

Astrometry 1

Imaging 44

Radial Velocities 686

Transit 2960

Transit Timing Variations 15

Eclipsing Timing Variations 9

Microlensing 64

Pulsating Timing Variations 2

Orbital Brightness Modulations 6

By Kepler Light Curves 2622

Transiting 2983

Spectral Analysis of Kepler Goldi Locks Planets

Credit: NASA/JPL/KECK

Keck Observatory

Hawaii's Keck Telescope has performed a spectral analysis of the Kepler Habitable Zone Planets. The results indicate the best possible scenarios that scientists have been hoping for as the Keck Team has clearly identified many elemental compositions that support life on earth. While studying the starlight of these planetary systems findings indicate that we live in a universe full of complex new planetary systems. These systems are found to be elementally abundant with Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Iron and the footprints of Life.

Abundances of Carbon and Oxygen were found to be enriched in stars with planetary systems. These results indicates that many exotic worlds may be formed in carbon rich environments. We find that the elemental abundances in planetary systems align with that of their host stars. Data from the Kepler Space Observatory suggests that there may be more than two billion planets in our galaxy capable of supporting life. We estimate that 10% - 20% of planets can be potentially Earth-like. Our estimates and real findings are based upon the probability of a planet residing with-in the habitable zone of it's star, and that the temperature and pressure conditions will allow liquid water to exist.

The most recent results from the Kepler Mission and new information shows us that we live in a universe abundant with planetary systems alike to those in our own star system. We have also learned about a new class of planets ranging from earth to Neptune in size completely unlike anything seen in our solar system. New information tells us that planetary and star systems are not all alike, many planets have been found around binary and trinary star systems, adding to the complexity and diversity of our results.

Citizen Scientists are encouraged to volunteer at planethunters.org with the opportunity of learning how to classify planetary systems.

Planets From Kepler

TESS Take First Look At Universe

Endless Stars... Endless Planets... Endless Dreamers...

What do you see? Sometimes if you just get a brand new looking glass, a whole universe of new possibilities appears. That's what NASA, MIT, and SpaceX are making a reality by launching NASA's new TESS satellite into orbit with the goal of discovering many new worlds in our own Milky Way Galaxy. During the next two years TESS will scan the 200,000 or so nearest and brightest stars to Earth for telltale dimming signs caused when exoplanets cross their host stars.


Would you like to know how many planets are in our own Galactic back yard? I'm first on the list of people who are very excited to see the real results of NASA's new mission. The goal for TESS is to characterize many newly found planets, star systems and the characteristics that make up a diverse new universe of possibilities. In particular atmospheric compositions and the break down of elemental abundances via light spectral analysis will give us clues that will reveal many details about each world's climate, history, and the possibility that life could exist. The Kavli Foundation spoke with two scientists about the TESS mission to get an inside look at the development and about the goals of the project.

From the early results of the Kepler Mission we know that TESS is expected to discover many thousands of new worlds, there should be hundreds ranging in size from about one to two times Earth and many larger planets. Smaller rocky planets serve as prime targets, super earths tend to show up in multiples as well, discovering new diverse populations of planets will be the main objective of the mission. Detailed follow-up observations by other ground based telescopes such as the Keck Telescope in Hawaii will reveal atmospheric compositions of these worlds in new and in depth ways. There is nothing more exciting than being on the verge of making history and illuminating our understanding of the intimate details and workings of our universe.

By,
JLC

TIC 219328784