Sunlight alone doesn't insure life:

Just a brief topic reminder, that I tend to snip and/or ignore
whatever is boring or infomercial crapolla. Sorry about that,
although I will from time to time return the warm and fuzzy topic/
author stalking and bashing favor, with all the love and affection
that I and my battery of lose cannons can muster.

Unlike your typically bigoted anti-ET and/or anti most anything off-
world-intelligent mindset of this anti-think-tank Usenet that's more
Zionish naysayism than not, whereas I simply do not exclude whatever
rocks my boat, especially if it goes along with the regular laws of
physics and having some deductive degree or scope of science that's at
least capable of being replicated.

Though most other life isn't independently space travel worthy
(similar to 99.9999% of other complex life on Earth), never the less
ETs do exist, whereas otherwise our profound Usenet of such Zion borg
like naysayism has been noted from the very get go, as excluding
whatever's of other intelligent life, no matters what.

Interplanetary travels are in fact doable, with interstellar travels
using an icy proto-moon or planetoid that's going in the right
direction is also entirely doable, as providing the ultimate
spacecraft for safely accommodating such extended travels in case your
Federation ENTERPRISE craft isn't available.

Sunlight alone doesn't insure life; as you can have the most ideal of
a sun like our, as your world resides itself entirely within the zone
of life as we know it, and still be that of an inert or toxic plant or
moon that's otherwise summarily dead as far as DNA, much less of
anything intelligent worthy unless having been imported and
artificially sustained.

The odds on behalf of other life (intelligent or not) existing,
coexisting and/or having evolved on some other than Earth like wet and
salty planet, or atmospheric enhanced moon, are going to be rather
great if there's still local geothermal energy to being had, and
otherwise such other life is somewhat limited if nonexistent should
that planet or moon be a cold one without any significant elements of
other local energy at its disposal. Unless there's an artifical
source of imported energy provided, as for otherwise, a thin
atmosphere is not exactly a good sign, unless that orb has one heck of
a terrific magnetosphere that's good for at least 10 billions of
years.

A robust atmosphere, even if basically S8+CO2 or otherwise toxic to us
wet humans, is actually a good sign of what's possible to exist/
coexist within that environment (hot or cold).

Of the life on Earth that's most important of all being diatoms, is
worthy of our appreciating, whereas removing such diatoms from our
environment would have absolutely dire and lethal consequences, with
few if any biological or physiological adaptations that could manage
to circumvent that shortage or gap of evolution or the sustaining of
whatever panspermia.

Cosmic life may yet be entirely unlike anything on Earth. However,
the likely panspermia of complex DNA life arriving into our 98.5%
fluid world of such a nifty self-replicating planetary environment,
along with this Earth having some of its own energy and a fairly
protective magnetosphere in addition to it's diatom sustained
atmosphere, is what seems the more likely method of a given planet
being terraformed by happenstance or via intelligent design.

BTW, cosmic sunlight usually includes a much wider spectrum of energy
than provided by our somewhat wussy sun. For example, the spectrums
of energy derived from the Sirius star system far out-performs on
behalf of cultivating essential DNA formation, than is otherwise
available by the filtered spectrum of what relatively passive solar
energy we have to work with, especially of the UV moderated portion
that gets through our polluted air, along with hosting 100+ teratonnes
of h2o that's an important part of our atmosphere, which defends us
from the solar and cosmic soft and hard-Xrays, while otherwise
moderating the gamma spectrum enough so that our frail DNA has a
fighting chance.

Of course, with applied physics and of utilizing technology is what
makes most any planet or moon usable by various intelligent forms of
life (such as us). At least that's exactly what we humans accomplish
whenever having to survive within such environments that are otherwise
lethal to our survival in the buff, and you'd think ETs smart enough
to be getting around would be at least capable of their expertise
being one up on us.

Unfortunately, our usual faith-based methods of having skewed the past
and/or having excluded such evidence of other life as having been
existing/coexisting on or off-world, is simply a whole lot more
systematic pathetic than merely unfortunate. Much of the opposition
to whatever discovery of anything that's off-world intelligent is
usually based upon the published record, of which only they control.
-
"whoever controls the past, controls the future" / George Orwell
-
Brad Guth