Interstellar Updates

 

These are items of interest to the interstellar exploration community that we’ve found in our quest for information that will help us advance toward our goals.  If you know of anything we’ve overlooked, or any sources of such information we should monitor, or if you would like to be added to our IRG-updates mailing list and receive these updates in you email every weekday, please send that information to info@irg.space.

You can now search our database of interstellar updates and find items of interest to you.

September 26, 2025 updates

Deriving ʻOumuamua’s Anomalous Acceleration from First Principles in Spatial-Causal Geometry (SCG)
https://zenodo.org/records/17205296

The JWST weather report: Retrieving temperature variations, auroral heating, and static cloud coverage on SIMP-0136
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/10/aa55370-25/aa55370-25.html

Hot Rocks Survey. IV. Emission from LTT 3780 b Is Consistent with a Bare Rock
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/adfc51

JWST Detection of a Carbon-dioxide-dominated Gas Coma Surrounding Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0647

Modelling the effect of stellar metallicity on the XUV evolution of low-mass stars and its impact on exoplanet atmospheres/habitability
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395848251_Modelling_the_effect_of_stellar_metallicity_on_the_XUV_evolution_of_low-mass_stars_and_its_impact_on_exoplanet_atmosphereshabitability

Revising the Giant Planet Mass-Metallicity Relation: Deciphering the Formation Sequence of Giant Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20428

Not All Sub-Neptune Exoplanets Have Magma Oceans
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20429

How two-dimensional are planet-disc interactions? II. Radiation hydrodynamics and suitable cooling prescriptions
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20464

HWO Target Stars and Systems: A Prioritized Community List of Potential Stellar Targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory’s ExoEarth Survey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20544

September 25, 2025 updates

Planets Without Plate Tectonics and too Little Carbon Dioxide Could Mean that Technological Alien Life is Rare
https://www.europlanet.org/epsc-dps2025-planets-without-plate-tectonics-and-too-little-carbon-dioxide-could-mean-that-technological-alien-life-is-rare/

Winding motion of spirals in a gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disk
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02639-y

The GAPS Programme at TNG – LXIX. The dayside of WASP-76 b revealed by GIANO-B, HARPS-N, and ESPRESSO: Evidence of 3D atmospheric effects
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa55702-25/aa55702-25.html

Impact of rotation on synthetic mass–radius relationships of two-layer rocky planets and water worlds
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa54116-25/aa54116-25.html

Quantifying thermal water dissociation in the dayside photosphere of WASP-121 b using NIRPS
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa53724-25/aa53724-25.html

Evolution of Stellar Activity and Habitable zone: I. Ultraviolet Emission of Dwarfs in Open Clusters and Field Stars
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18559

Searching for GEMS: TOI-5349b is a Saturn-like planet orbiting a metal-rich early M-dwarf
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19492

Deep learning for exoplanet detection and characterization by direct imaging at high contrast
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20310

21st-Century Astrobiology Missions Should Seek These High-Confidence Biosignatures
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02746

September 24, 2025 updates

What do the fundamental constants of physics tell us about life?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09892

Is ozone a reliable proxy for molecular oxygen? – III. The impact of CH4 on the O2–O3 relationship for Earth-like atmospheres
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa56015-25/aa56015-25.html

Magnetohydrodynamic simulations preliminarily predict the habitability and radio emission of TRAPPIST-1e
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa55471-25/aa55471-25.html

Quantifying the Distribution of Europium in the Milky Way Disk: Its Connection to Planetary Habitability and the Source of the r-process
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adfb4d

A Comprehensive Analysis of Three Microlensing Planet Candidates with the Planet/Binary Degeneracy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18345

A multi-object approach for studying exoplanet atmospheres using high-resolution spectrographs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18721

A Scatter of Light from a Polarized World
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19172

Exploring the Sub-Neptune Frontier with JWST
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19247

September 23, 2025 updates

Surveying the stellar drivers of exoplanet evolution for the first time with the ESCAPE small explorer mission
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/13625/136250B/Surveying-the-stellar-drivers-of-exoplanet-evolution-for-the-first/10.1117/12.3063555.short

Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Its Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno Spacecraft
https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/12/9/851

A Model for Massless Gravity: The Maths that makes Interstellar Drives possible.
https://zenodo.org/records/17176483

The Hot Neptune Initiative (HONEI) – II. TOI-5795 b: A hot super-Neptune orbiting a metal-poor star
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa56081-25/aa56081-25.html

RAVEN: RAnking and Validation of ExoplaNets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17645

Identifying close-in Jupiters that arrived via disk migration: Evidence of primordial alignment, preference of nearby companions and hint of runaway migration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16322

Polarized Signatures of Variable Worlds: Modeling Heterogeneous Habitable Earth- and Early Mars-like (Exo)planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16338

Evaluation of the magnetic field of hot Jupiters within the geometric approach
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16565

Direct Imaging for the Debris Disk around ε Eridani with the Cool-Planet Imaging Coronagraph
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16761

Identifying rocky planets and water worlds among sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets with the Habitable Worlds Observatory
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16798

An Initial Assessment of the Hanle Echelle Spectrograph for Exoplanet Atmosphere Studies
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17142

Radial Velocity Strategies for the Orbital Refinement of Exoplanet Direct Imaging Targets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17169

A Thick Volatile Atmosphere on the Ultra-Hot Super-Earth TOI-561 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17231

Improving radial velocity precision with CARMENES-PLUS:An upgrade of the near-infrared spectrograph cooling system
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17966

A Decade of Transit-Timing Measurements Confirm Resonance in the K2-19 System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18031

Ionospheric Electron Heat Flow Modulates Planetary Ambipolar Electric Fields
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10218

September 22, 2025 Updates

Chronothetic and aspectual diachrony in Astrobiology: the inchoativity of Life
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395479527_Chronothetic_and_aspectual_diachrony_in_Astrobiology_the_inchoativity_of_Life

Quantum Stellar Batteries (QSBs): A Theoretical Framework for Stellar‐Scale Energy Storage
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202508.2028/v2

Is ozone a reliable proxy for molecular oxygen? III. The impact of CH4 on the O2–O3 relationship for Earth-like atmospheres
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa56015-25/aa56015-25.html

X-ray photodesorption of complex organic molecules in protoplanetary disks II. Formic acid, HCOOH
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa55420-25/aa55420-25.html

Chemical transformation of CO in evolving protoplanetary discs across stellar masses: A route to C-rich inner regions
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa55195-25/aa55195-25.html

Properties of Free-floating Planets Ejected through Planet–Planet Scattering
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf4e2

Vertical Structure of Interstellar Dust in the Milky Way
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/staf1585/8258955?searchresult=1

Astrometric exomoon detection by means of optical interferometry
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15304

Untapped: Veloce Detects Calcium in the Atmosphere of WASP-189b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15306

THYME XIII: Two young Neptunes orbiting a 75-Myr star in the Alpha Persei Cluster
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15313

Dynamical Analysis of the HD 169142 Planet-Forming Disk: Twelve Years of High-Contrast Polarimetry
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15323

Detection and characterisation of a 106-day transiting Jupiter : TOI-2449 b / NGTS-36 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15424

ATREIDES I. Embarking on a trek across the exo-Neptunian landscape with the TOI-421 system
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15746

ExoIris: fast exoplanet transmission spectroscopy in Python
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15913

JWST-TST DREAMS: Sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the Neptune-mass planet HAT-P-26 b from NIRSpec G395H transmission spectroscopy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16082

Binary-lens Microlensing Degeneracy: Impact on Planetary Sensitivity and Mass-ratio Function
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16191