Home Sweet Home?: Determining Habitability From the Eccentricities of Kepler-186

In the search for habitable exoplanets, astronomers' primary criterion has historically been that the planet's equilibrium temperature be suitable for liquid water. Equilibrium temperature is often determined assuming a circular orbit and, therefore, a constant star-planet separation, especially for low-mass transiting exoplanets. Using photometric data from the first Kepler mission, we analyze the transit light curves of Kepler 186, an exoplanetary system located approximately 150pc from Earth. In this poster, we report new lower limits on the eccentricities of the system found using the astrodensity profiling method and discuss how those values effect habitabilty. We also report other orbital, stellar, and planetary properties, which are consistent with, though slightly more precise than, the values reported in Quintana et al, 2014. We assert that, with an eccentricity of 0.092, a semimajor axis of 0.35 AU, and a radius of 1.06 Earth radii, Kepler 186f is an Earth-sized exoplanet that spends its entire orbit in the habitable zone of its star.