There are many approaches to understanding habitability and searching for life. These range between exploring definitions of life, to learning about the limits of living systems from Earth’s extremophiles, searching for direct signs of life in situ or remotely, and looking for signatures of habitats friendly to life.
From an astrobiological perspective, I am interested in searching for habitability signatures like ocean glint in exoplanet phase curves [Polarized Glint] or signs of water (or other solvents) cycles and their observability in direct imaging missions [Rainbows and Glint Observability]. I am also interested in agnostic biosignatures like enantiomeric excess [Phototroph Spectropolarimetry] and gaseous bisignatures like oxygen (in context) [Earth as a Polarized Exoplanet]. More generally, I am also interested in the ubiquity of habitability and how this may extend to migrated terrestrial and super Earth worlds [Habitable Zone Catalog].
Most of my work is currently funded by a NASA ROSES “HabWorlds” grant on the polarization signatures of terrestrial planets, and will continue with a second awarded “HabWorlds” grant exploring observing strategies for these scenarios and means to map them without resolving them.
An example of the phase curves of a vaguely Earth-like planet with visible water clouds and ocean glint forming peaks that change in relative shape with wavelength. Note that at most wavelengths, more structure is seen in the polarized phase curve (lower panel) than the unpolarized/classic photometry phase curve (top panel), illustrating how the polarization might be used to more fully characterize these features. From Vaughan, Gebhard, Bott+ 2023