The Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems (HabCat) is a catalogue of
star systems which conceivably have
habitable planet
Planetary habitability is the measure of a planet's or a natural satellite's potential to develop and maintain environments hospitable to life. Life may be generated directly on a planet or satellite endogenously or be transferred to it from a ...
s. The list was developed by scientists
Jill Tarter and
Margaret Turnbull
Margaret Carol "Maggie" Turnbull (born 1975) is an American astronomer and astrobiologist. She received her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 2004. Turnbull is an authority on star systems which may have habitable planets, so ...
under the auspices of
Project Phoenix, a part of
SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other pl ...
.
The list was based upon the
Hipparcos Catalogue
''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial ...
(which has 118,218 stars) by filtering on a wide range of star system features. The current list contains 17,129 "HabStars".
External links
Target Selection for SETI: 1. A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems Turnbull, Tarter, submitted 31 Oct 2002 (last accessed 19 Jan 2010)
Target selection for SETI. II. Tycho-2 dwarfs, old open clusters, and the nearest 100 stars by Turnbull and Tarter, (last accessed 19 Jan 2010)
- an article on the
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
website
Astronomical catalogues of stars
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
Exoplanet catalogues
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