In a breakthrough discovery, clear evidence of at least one planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, has been found by the international Pale Red Dot collaboration.
The exoplanet – dubbed Proxima b – has a minimum mass of about 1.3 times that of the Earth and is therefore most likely a terrestrial planet with a rocky surface, and has a short orbit of around 11.2 days.
Our newly found neighbor also lies within its star’s habitable zone, meaning that it could, in theory, sustain liquid water on its surface, and may even have an atmosphere. The team suggests that the system may even contain another larger exoplanet that is much further away, or smaller companion planets, but the evidence for these is currently not conclusive.
Proxima Centauri was first spotted in 1915 by the Scottish astronomer Robert Innes, and is a red-dwarf star that is merely 4.2 light-years away from the Sun, in the constellation of Centaurus. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye and lies relatively close to the bright Alpha Centauri binary star system. Thanks to its proximity to us, we can clearly resolve the star’s angular diameter, which is about one-seventh that of the Sun, while the star’s mass is about an eighth of the Sun’s.
Unfortunately for SEIT Network station DM12jw Proxima b is in the Souther Hemisphere and cannot be seen by this station.