Earth

Biosignatures of the Earth. I. Airborne spectropolarimetric detection of photosynthetic life

Context. Homochirality is a generic and unique property of life on Earth and is considered a universal and agnostic biosignature. Homochirality induces fractional circular polarization in the incident light that it reflects. Because this circularly …

LOUPE: observing Earth from the Moon to prepare for detecting life on Earth-like exoplanets

LOUPE, the Lunar Observatory for Unresolved Polarimetry of the Earth, is a small, robust spectro-polarimeter for observing the Earth as an exoplanet. Detecting Earth-like planets in stellar habitable zones is one of the key challenges of modern …