45 Prime Habitable Exoplanets

A Cornell team used Gaia and the NASA Exoplanet Archive to identify 45 rocky exoplanets that best match Earth‑like irradiation and other criteria, with 24 singled out as top candidates for surface habitability. The list includes well‑known worlds (Proxima Centauri b, TRAPPIST‑1 system) and newer detections (TOI‑715b), and is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. — This target list reframes the search for life from a scattershot endeavor to a prioritized program, affecting telescope priorities, funding decisions, and public narratives about the likelihood of detecting biosignatures.