The habitability of eccentric planetary orbits

The huge number of exo-planets discovered so far show an unexpected diversity of planetary systems where most planets indicate eccentricity motion. Since Earth is still the only habitable planet we know and the planetary motion in our Solar system is nearly circular we study possible constraints of habitability in case of eccentric planetary motion. Previous dynamical studies have shown that the architecture of the giant planets in a system might influence the motion in the habitable zone (HZ). Such orbital perturbations may change the conditions of habitability for a terrestrial planet in the HZ. In this context, it has been shown that a small change in the mutual distance of Jupiter and Saturn would lead to a secular perturbation of Earth orbit with variations in eccentricity from 0.0 to 0.7. For planetary motion in binary star systems gravitational perturbations play an important role not only for the long-term stability also the habitability can be affected. In this presentation we discuss the problems that will arise in case an Earth-type planet exits the HZ periodically and approaches a Sun-like star up to 0.3 AU where we pay special attention to the Nitrogen-loss from this planet.