News

The METIS is the first instrument of the Extremely Large Telescope to pass its final design review!

The Exoplanets and Habitability Group will be involved in four projects that have been awarded with observation time in the third cycle of proposal calls using the Mid InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), three of them as Principal Investigator. The projects will result in an improved understanding of the characteristics and formation of cold companions.

This study aims to identify exemplary science cases for observing N2O, CH3Cl, and CH3Br in exoplanet atmospheres at abundances consistent with biogenic production using a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometric observatory, such as the LIFE (Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) mission concept.

The ETH-led LIFE space mission aims at the detection and atmospheric characterization of small, temperate exoplanets, to asses if some of them show signs of biological activity, i.e. life outside our solar system.

At its meeting of 6 and 7 December 2023 and upon application of Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich, the ETH Board appointed twelve professors and awarded the title "Professor of Practice" once. 

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers including members from the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics at ETH Zurich measured ammonia in the atmosphere of a cold brown dwarf, showing that the isotopic abundance of ammonia can be used to study how giant gas planets form.

Lecture Series about selected topics of space research and exploration consisting of individual talks given by different leading experts from academia and industry.

The project „Quantifying the prospects for characterizing habitable and inhabited terrestrial exoplanets with future observations“ is a joint effort between the research groups of Derek Vance (Institute for Geochemistry and Petrology) and Sascha Quanz (Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics) and will be financially supported by the COPL, Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life.

On June 1^st the facility for the METIS Cryostat integration was handed over.

"Characterizing Substellar Atmospheres in the Era of JWST", Brittany Miles

The Search for Habitable and Inhabited Worlds in our Galaxy, Ravi Kopparapu

Investigating the evolution of the atmosphere of an adolescent Jupiter with the MIRI instrument onboard JWST.

In a recently published study, we investigated how well the LIFE telescope could characterize a cloudy Venus-like exoplanet.

A major goal in the discovery and characterisation of exoplanets is to identify terrestrial- type worlds that are similar to (or otherwise distinct from) our Earth.

In the fabulous Las Vegas, USA, between May 2-6 the Exoplanets IV conference took place. Our group was well represented, with 7 members participating and presenting the science projects they are conducting. Here a list of the Exoplanets and Habitability contributions.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25, 2021 and is undergoing its commissioning phase.

What new telescopes are needed for this? In recent years, astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system – so-​called exoplanets. They orbit stars other than our sun. Some of them could offer conditions that make life possible.

It’s a great pleasure to welcome Emily Garvin to our research group as a new doctoral student!

On 8 February, Gabriele successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Observing planet formation in multiple wavelengths”. Congratulations!

We do not yet know whether the Sun-​like stars closest to us, the α Centauri A/B binary, harbour an Earth-​like planet. However, thanks to new modelling work, we now have a good sense of what such a planet, should it exist, would look like and how it might have evolved.

We are excited to announce that our group has recently been awarded 73 hours of Very Large Telescope (VLT) time to complete the census of radial velcocity planets around M dwarfs in the solar neighborhood.

For Didier Queloz, excellent research requires international networks and know-​how. He calls on politicians to admit British and Swiss scientists to Horizon Europe.

We are excited to announce that our group has recently been awarded 2.5 hours of Very Large Telescope (VLT) time to investigate the nature of the proposed young planet YSES-1b using the newly upgraded VLT/CRIRES+ and the VLT/MUSE spectrographs.

Gabriele Cugno, a member of our group, was recently awarded a PostDoc.Mobility Grant through the Swiss National Foundation to continue searching for young embedded planets in the mid-infrared, unveiling the youngest population of exoplanets ever imaged. The project will be carried out at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA).

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is set to take place in the coming days. For ETH Zurich physicist Adrian Glauser, who was involved in two unspectacular but vital contributions to this ambitious project, it will bring to an end a long period of anxious anticipation.

An international team of researchers with participation of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich has succeeded in capturing an image of a very special planet. No known planet orbits a hotter or more massive star system. Some astronomers even considered it impossible for planets to exist in such an environment.

This work, led by Polychronis Patapis, was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

We welcome Lia Aleksandrovic-Sartori as new Postdoc in our group. Lia did her PhD in the former Black Hole group in our institute, then took a break from academia and she is now eager to explore new astrophysical terrain. She will support our efforts to constrain the architecture of nearby planetary systems and investigate statistical ways to quantify if planets are habitable or even inhabited.

The White Paper describing the unique scientific potential of the LIFE space mission that was submitted to the European Space Agency in the context of the Voyage 2050 process was accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy.

A team from our group was recently awarded an ESA Co-funded Research Grant through the space agency’s Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP). The project title is “Machine learning-driven design requirements for future ESA exo-life finder observatories”.

While Domenico Giardini, Professor of Seismology and Geodynamics, already has his hands on Mars, Adrian Glauser, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, has to be patient. Among many others, Adrian worked on the James-​Webb-Telescope that shall finally launch this fall, with a delay of many years.

The James Webb Telescope, an international partnership between NASA, ESA and CSA, is due to launch in October 2021. ETH Zurich contributes to the mission through its collaboration with the international Mid- Infrared Instrument (MIRI) Consortium. 

Renowned planetary researcher and Nobel laureate Didier Queloz is moving to ETH Zurich, where he will be joining with other professors to study the origins of life in a new centre.

The current issue of the “UniPress” magazine published by the University of Bern features (Exo)Planetary Science as main topic.

We are excited to announce that our group has recently been awarded 7.8h of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) time to search for the forming planet HD163296b using the JWST/MIRI coronagraphic imager.

Protoplanetary disks are considered to be the places where planet formation occurs around young pre-main-sequence stars. With recently developed high-contrast imaging instruments at large telescopes such as the VLT, it is possible to clearly detect the light reflected by the dust in some protoplanetary disks and even study its optical properties, which provides clues about the evolution of the dust particles and early stages of planet formation.

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be the largest optical to mid-infrared telescope ever built when it starts operations towards the middle of this decade.

Reaching new heights with 100 consortium publications including the early exoplanet demographics release.