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New exoplanet discovered near neighboring dwarf star: "Significant success"

2022-02-27T06:13:19.429Z


New exoplanet discovered near neighboring dwarf star: "Significant success" Created: 02/27/2022, 07:00 By: Julia Schöneseiffen The closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is orbited by at least three exoplanets. The third planet was only recently discovered. Cerro Paranal - The universe has always fascinated people. Now a team of researchers has discovered a new planet near our neighboring st


New exoplanet discovered near neighboring dwarf star: "Significant success"

Created: 02/27/2022, 07:00

By: Julia Schöneseiffen

The closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is orbited by at least three exoplanets.

The third planet was only recently discovered.

Cerro Paranal - The universe has always fascinated people.

Now a team of researchers has discovered a new planet near our neighboring star Proxima Centauri.

Proxima Centauri is the star closest to Earth after the Sun.

So the red dwarf star is our neighbor - and it is 4.2 light years away from us.

About five years ago, the first planet orbiting Proxima Centauri was discovered.

"Proxima Centauri b" is an Earth-sized planet orbiting the dwarf star at a distance that theoretically allows for the presence of liquid water on the surface.

This artificial rendering shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the star Proxima Centauri.

© ESO / M. Kornmesser / dpa

In early 2020, researchers then found evidence of a second planet.

Proxima Centauri c takes 5.3 years to orbit the star and has about seven times the mass of Earth.

Proxima c is probably a gas planet with a surface temperature of -234 degrees Celsius.

New exoplanet discovered: Third planet orbits Proxima Centauri

Now a research group led by João Faria from the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço in Portugal has found a third planet.

Using the ESPRESSO precision spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory ESO in Chile, the team discovered the Proxima Centauri d.

The researchers have now published the results in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Proxima d orbits the star in 5.12 days and is about 4 million kilometers from the red dwarf.

For comparison: the distance between the earth and the sun is 150 million kilometers.

This means that the distance between the exoplanet Proxima d and the dwarf star is very small, which is why it is too hot for life-friendly conditions on the surface of Proxima d.

Researchers discover new planet near the star Proxima Centauri: "Extremely significant success"

Two years ago there were first indications of the planet with a mass of 2.5 times that of Mars.

This makes it the lightest exoplanet ever discovered using the radial velocity technique.

This method measures the tiny fluctuations in a star's motion caused by a planet's gravitational pull.

"This success is extremely significant," explains Pedro Figueira, who oversees the ESPRESSO instrument at ESO.

"It shows that the radial velocity technique has the potential to discover light planets like our own, which are believed to be the most common in our galaxy and may potentially host life as we know it." Researcher Faria is also excited about the discovery of the exoplanet: "This result clearly shows what ESPRESSO is capable of and makes me curious about what else it will find in the future," he explains in an ESO press release.

In an ordinary series of research, astrophysicists did not discover a planet, but they did discover an unknown object in space.

(jsch)

Source: merkur

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