The more we study the universe, the more we realize that the smaller our planet and we actually are. A new planet has been discovered orbiting our neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, which seems quite distant and difficult to reach for humans, but is actually right next to us, 4 light-years away. Here are the details…
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New planet discovered named Proxima d
Proxima Centauri was known to host two exoplanets. But recent researchers using the European Southern Observatory’s sizable telescope have revealed that these two planets may have a brother that could top the list of the lightest exoplanets ever found.
The newly discovered planet, called Proxima d, orbits extremely close to its star, only 2.5 million miles away. To explain this better, we can state that the distance between Mercury and the sun is one-tenth.
In other words, it is so close that it takes only five days to complete one full rotation around its sun (Earth revolves around the Sun in only 365 days). Therefore, because it is so close to its Sun, its surface is too hot to be suitable for any life or water.
This planet is only a quarter of the mass of Earth. This makes it extremely light by exoplanet standards. The exoplanet’s small mass makes it very difficult to spot. So after initial observations with ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope, researchers turned to the Echelle Spectrograph and Stable Spectroscopic Observations for Rocky Exoplanets (ESPRESSO) instrument on the VLT.
João Faria, lead author of the study, said in a statement:
The discovery shows that our nearest stellar neighbor appears to be full of interesting new worlds within reach of further study and future exploration. After obtaining new observations, we were able to confirm this signal as a new planetary candidate. I was excited by the challenge of detecting such a small signal and, by doing so, discovering an exoplanet so close to Earth.
Many exoplanets are discovered using the transit method, where astronomers look for small dips in a star’s brightness caused by a planet passing between us and the star. But this exoplanet was discovered using a different method, called the radial velocity technique, which looks for tiny wobbles in the motions of a star caused by the gravity of a passing planet.
Pedro Figueira, ESPRESSO instrument scientist at ESO in Chile, said:
This success is extremely important. It shows that the radial velocity technique has the potential to reveal a population of light planets like ours, which is expected to be the most abundant in our galaxy and could potentially harbor life as we know it.
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