Habitats beyond the Solar System?

Abstract

With the essential ground work on the Solar system now covered, the remaining chapters take us much further afield — to planetary systems around other stars. These distant planets, and the possibility of life on them, are the focus of this book. In Section 7.4 I’ll describe the requirements for a planet to be habitable. But habitability also depends on the type of star the planet orbits, and on where the star lies in the Galaxy. It is these factors that I focus on in Sections 7.1–7.3, starting with our Galaxy.