Astrobiology and Planetary Atmospheres

Published: 29 Jul 2015
beta Pic b with NACO

Joint ESO, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Andrés Bello Workshop:
ESO Vitacura, Santiago, Chile, 28 September – 02 October 2015

Astrobiology has become the meeting point for astronomers, biologists, geologists, and climatologists in solving the puzzle of how life originated in the Universe. Enormous progress has been made since the discovery of the first extra-solar planet (51 Peg b). The main aims of this workshop are: to bring together the major astrobiology groups; foster exchanges across all the major disciplines involved in the field of astrobiology, and in particular those working on climatology of Solar System planets; and include a strong parallel outreach programme.

An armada of space missions is already scheduled for launch to study exoplanets in the next decade, such as JWST, TESS, CHEOPS and PLATO. Ground-based telescopes in Chile, on the other hand, are deploying a powerful new suite of instruments designed to find and characterise exoplanets, such as GPI in Gemini, SPHERE and, in the near future, ESPRESSO at the VLT.

AstroBio 2015 is the third symposium of this major series.
Further information is available on the workshop webpage or by email. Extended deadlines for abstract submission 20 August 2015 and registration 6 September 2015 have been set.