Habitable Zones in Binary Stars

Even though considerable efforts have been spent on investigating the extent of Habitable Zones (HZs) in single star systems ([1], [2] and references therein), regions where Earth-analogues could harbor liquid water on the surface in and around binaries have been treated mainly from a dynamical point of view (e.g. [3]). We present analytical estimates for a variable stellar radiation field and the extent of possible HZs in binary star systems as a function of the binaries' orbital elements, as well as numerical predictions on the actual amount of radiation arriving at an orbiting planet.