Habitable Worlds Almanac
A daily digest app for amateur space fans that tracks every rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone — from LHS 1140b to TRAPPIST-1e — through its full discovery arc, atmosphere updates, and habitability score, with plain-English context for each new finding.
Amateur astronomers and space-curious adults who follow exoplanet news
- Personal planet watchlist with push alerts when a followed world gets new atmospheric data
- Habitability ticker: a daily feed of confirmed/refuted atmospheres, sized-to-Earth comparisons, and "what changed" explainers
- Stitch-the-evidence view: every claim links back to the underlying paper, telescope observation, or press release
- Side-by-side planet pages (LHS 1140b vs K2-18b vs TRAPPIST-1e) so fans can follow the field, not just one star
First confirmed atmosphere on a habitable-zone rocky planet dropped this week and is dominating Hacker News and BBC — the public is hungry for a single place to follow this fast-moving beat instead of scattered press releases.
LHS 1140b atmosphere confirmation is a genuine, multi-outlet viral moment — covered by Nature, BBC, Guardian, Space.com, Astrobiology.com, and trending on HN (151 pts / 113 comments); clear public appetite for follow-up coverage.First atmosphere found around Earth-like planet LHS 1140b - BBC ↗Found: a rocky exoplanet with an atmosphere — could it host life? ↗
Existing players (ExoplanetHunter.com, SpaceOdysseyHub habitability tool, Hugging Face habitability scorer, ExoHabitabilityLab on GitHub) are mostly calculators or static catalogs, not narrative daily digests tracking discovery arcs — meaningful but not wide-open gap.Exoplanet Hunter ↗Exoplanet Habitability Scorer — Find Your Second Earth ↗ExoplanetHabitabilityLab - GitHub ↗
Niche science-enthusiast audience monetizes modestly — comparable stargazing/space apps (SkySafari, Star Walk) charge ~$5–$50/yr; willingness to pay for an exoplanet-specific digest is unproven and the addressable market of dedicated 'exoplanet followers' is small.Earth-like exoplanet found to have an atmosphere - The Guardian ↗
Exoplanet discovery is a multi-decade accelerating beat — JWST, Roman Space Telescope, ELT and Ariel will generate steady habitable-zone findings for 20+ years, sustaining content supply well beyond the current news spike.Detected: Rocky, Habitable-zone Exoplanet With An Atmosphere - Astrobiology.com ↗
NASA Exoplanet Archive provides a free public API, arxiv/abs feeds are well-structured, and LLM-based plain-English summarization is off-the-shelf — a daily digest with discovery-arc tracking is straightforward to build and maintain.Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet - Space.com ↗