Instructor: Jeffrey Linksy

Mondays, April 13 - 27 | 1 - 3 pm | $36

More than 6,000 planets in our universe, called exoplanets, have now been identified orbiting around stars other than our sun. This course, from CU’s Jeffrey Linksy, describes how exoplanets are discovered and the techniques used to study their properties. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope are now determining which planets have rocky surfaces and oceans like Earth's, and which are more like Jupiter, a gas giant.

Whether an exoplanet can sustain life forms depends on its distance from the star, the presence of water on or near the exoplanet's surface, and the properties of the star. We discuss the pros and cons of habitability, predict which types of stars could have inhabited exoplanets, and consider the probability of life on these exoplanets. The class consists of a lecture and a discussion.

About the Instructor

Jeffrey Linsky is Professor Emeritus in CU’s Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department, a Fellow Adjoint of JILA (a joint institute of CU and the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). He is the author of Host Stars and Their Effects on Exoplanet Atmospheres, which provides an important foundation for future scientists. At JILA, Linksy's research involves analyzing high-resolution stellar spectra to measure the physical properties of stars, the atmospheres of exoplanets, the gas in the local interstellar medium, and the abundance of deuterium in the galaxy.

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