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A study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics introduces us to a new planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system. A nice discovery made by the gigantic European telescopes installed in Chile.
It is the suburb of our solar system: Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. And it has just won a new planet, as Joao Faria from the University of Porto explains, who led the study published on Astronomy and Astrophysics, at the microphone of Simon Rozefrom the Science Department: “ We have detected a new exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri. The closest star to the sun is just over four light years from our star. We already knew two exoplanets around it, which we called Proxima B and Proxima C. It is for this reason that we call this third Proxima D ».
►Read the study in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Proxima D, one of the smallest planets ever discovered, a quarter of the mass of the earth, very close to its star, goes around it in just five days. It’s probably rocky but other than that, not much is known about it.
« Small stars have somewhat turbulent, fairly long youths and they heat up a lot… And so, for perhaps a billion years, this planet was really much more heated than it is today. And we ask ourselves the question: what kind of atmosphere can there be? Is there one more? Scientifically, it’s a really exciting investigation, to know if something in the form of the atmosphere or on the surface, could have remained of interest when it is really very hot. », Comments François Forget planetary scientist, CNRS researcher at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute.
And we will soon be able to study Proxima D more precisely, with the commissioning in 2025 of the giant European telescope, the largest ever built.
►Also listen : What does Proxima B look like?