Our Sun harbours magnetic fields which cause myriad of phenomena, among them flares and coronal mass ejections that are crucial ingredients in the changing environmental conditions of the near-Earth space. Similarly, the magnetic activity of other stars modulate their immediate environments, and in the case of strong magnetic activity also potentially affect the habitability of the orbiting planets. This IAU Focus Meeting takes advantage of the recent advances in studies of the Sun and the heliosphere to explore stellar activity and its impact on habitability of exoplanets. The main question we want to raise is: Is the traditional definition of the habitable zone as the region where liquid water can exist enough? We argue that we have to look beyond “the Goldilocks zone” and look at the habitability more broadly, taking also into account influ influence of the host star in much broader terms.
The main topics we will cover in this Focus Meeting include:
- Solar and stellar activity
- Effect of the solar activity on planets
- Planetary habitability
- Solar and stellar flares
- Coronal Mass Ejections and winds
- Space Weather impact on exoplanets