The habitable zone

It has been a while since ordering from Saigon Grill. I don't even know if the delivery boys are still on strike, but I've been humming L'Internationale in my head ever since.

I just finished an investigation of whether it will be possible to determine the rotation rate of an extrasolar planet through its transit spectrum. You can find it here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0004

Now, I'm trying to calculate the habitable zone of a star. Broadly speaking, the habitable zone is the region around a star where there can be life. People (perhaps taking a parochial view) often take this to mean the region where there can be liquid water. And that's what I'm taking it to mean. There has been some impressive work done already by Jim Kastings and others. I'm just getting started now, but I'm trying to build some on what has already been done. More later....