Exploring the Habitable Zone for Kepler planetary candidates

TL;DR

This paper presents a straightforward method to assess the habitability of terrestrial planets around stars, accounting for atmospheric variations, to aid in evaluating Kepler and future planetary candidates.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, adaptable approach for habitability assessment based on planetary atmospheres and stellar flux, applicable to current and upcoming exoplanet data.

Findings

Uncertainties in habitability estimates are discussed.

The method can be applied to Kepler data and future surveys.

Key parameters influencing habitability are identified.

Abstract

This paper outlines a simple approach to evaluate habitability of terrestrial planets by assuming different types of planetary atmospheres and using corresponding model calculations. Our approach can be applied for current and future candidates provided by the Kepler mission and other searches. The resulting uncertainties and changes in the number of planetary candidates in the HZ for the Kepler February 2011 data release are discussed. To first order the HZ depends on the effective stellar flux distribution in wavelength and time, the planet albedo, and greenhouse gas effects. We provide a simple set of parameters which can be used for evaluating current and future planet candidates from transit searches.