AASTCS 5 Recap: Radio Exploration of Planetary Habitability
T. Joseph Lazio Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Radio Exploration of Planetary Habitability was the fifth meeting in the American Astronomical Society's Topical Conference Series. Held 7-12 May 2017 at the Miramonte Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, California, AASTCS 5 drew more than 60 attendees from around the world.
Notable aspects of the conference included the interdisciplinary nature of the topic and the intellectual breadth of the participants, the diversity of approaches to studying this topic presented by recent discoveries and by the participants themselves, the expanding meaning of "star-planet interactions," and the expectation of an increasingly statistical approach to the topic.
Potential areas of future research include the actual extent to which planetary magnetic fields shield planetary atmospheres; the planetary dynamo process itself, particularly once multiple extrasolar planetary magnetic fields are confirmed; and the many types of star-planet interactions predicted by theory and detected (or, at least, detectable) observationally.
A major topic of the conference concerned impending opportunities, highlighted by a number of new or upcoming specialized observatories, to observe exoplanets at radio wavelengths.
The authors listed below have summarized these main points of AASTCS 5 and expanded briefly upon potential avenues for future investigation in a conference summary published on arXiv.org. Most of the conference presentations are available on the AASTSC 5 website.
A future meeting on this topic, given the variety of data sets being generated over the next few years, is warranted.
T. Joseph W. Lazio (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)
A. Wolszczan (Pennsylvania State University)
M. Güdel (University of Vienna)
Rachel A. Osten (Space Telescope Science Institute)
Jan Forbrich (University of Vienna)
M. M. Jardine (University of St. Andrews)
P. K. G. Williams (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)