Curious about the latest advancements? For the first time from its birth, ExoplaNAts team will meet in person to share its most recent breakthroughs and brainstorming sessions. We're also extending an invitation to scientists from diverse groups, eager to foster fresh collaborations and collect innovative ideas. Don't miss this opportunity to join forces and explore new horizons together!" 

Read more here!

Astrobiology and its outcomes require a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach, in which the microbial, geological, chemical, astronomical, and physical domains of research are interlinked. To better understand the multidisciplinary research landscape in this area, we quantitatively reviewed the global scientific literature on astrobiology, with a focus on biomining and bioleaching through bibliometric network analysis, investigating patterns and trends in its development over time. The network analysis of keyword co-occurrence highlights different connecting and overlapping clusters, illustrating the multidisciplinary character of astrobiology. Temporal analyses show a recent focus on topics related to microbiology and geomicrobiology, emphasizing the role that these fields will play in future astrobiology research. 

Read more here!

We present the second catalog of the Planet Patrol citizen science project containing 999 uniformly vetted exoplanet candidates within the TESS ExoFOP archive. The catalog was produced by fully exploiting the power of the Citizen Science Planet Patrol project. We vetted TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) based on the results of Discovery And Vetting of Exoplanets (DAVE) pipeline. We also implemented the automatic disposition generator, a custom procedure aimed at generating the final classification for each TOI that was vetted by at least three vetters. The majority of the candidates in our catalog, 752 TOIs, passed the vetting process and were labelled as planet candidates. We ruled out 142 candidates as false positives and flagged 105 as potential false positives

Read more here!

We performed a systematic validation of 250 transit-like events in the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) archive in the parameter region defined by P ≤ 4 d and 3 R⊕ ≤ R ≤ 5 R⊕.  Through our analysis, we identified 18 hot Neptune-sized candidates, with a false positive probability <50%⁠. Nine of these planet candidates still need to be confirmed.  We statistically validated  two systems: TOI-277 b and TOI-1288 b. 

Read more here!

We report the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) discovery of a three-planet system around the bright Sun-like star TOI-411 located 63 parsecs away.  TOI-411 b is a super-Earth while TOI-411 c and TOI-411 d are two sub-Neptunians.

Read more here!

On our planet, life is able to harvest energy from a wide array of thermodynamic disequilibria, generally in the form of redox disequilibrium.  Each of these reactions has a specific midpoint redox potential accessible thanks to specialised proteins called oxidoreductases, that constitute life's engines. These proteins have one or more metal cofactors acting as catalytic centres to exchange electrons. These metals are de facto the key component of the engines that life uses to tap into the thermodynamic disequilibria needed to fuel metabolism.  

Read more here!

 In this work we present the TESS Triple-9 (TT9) catalog - a uniformly vetted catalog containing dispositions for 999 exoplanet candidates listed on ExoFOP-TESS, known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). The TT9 was produced using the Discovery And Vetting of Exoplanets pipeline, DAVE, and utilizing the power of citizen science as a part of the Planet Patrol project.  

Read more here!

Our latest work aims at describing how the efficiency of photosynthesis on Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone varies according to the different stars that might host planets! Check out the press release here!

We presented this work and its latest updates at the 44th COSPAR SCIENTIFIC ASSEMBLY held in Athens in July 2022. Read more here!