Using the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory, a team of astronomers is discovering evidence of another planet orbiting the planet “Proxima Centauri”.
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The discovery of a new planet orbiting the closest star to our sun
Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, a team of astronomers have discovered evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri.
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system. This candidate planet is the third discovery in the system and the lightest planet discovered so far orbiting this star.
2/ “Our closest stellar neighbour seems to be packed with interesting new worlds, within reach of further study and future exploration,” says lead author João Faria, from @IAstroPT .
Credit: Digitized Sky Survey 2
Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin/ Mahdi Zamani pic.twitter.com/7l8Q1RbVYp— IT (@IT) February 10, 2022
The planet, which is only a quarter the mass of Earth, is one of the lightest exoplanets ever found, according to João Faria, a Portuguese researcher and lead author of the study recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
According to scientific data, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, located just over four light-years away.
The newly discovered planet is about 2.5 million miles (4 million km) from Proxima Centauri, less than a tenth of Mercury’s distance from our sun.
The newly discovered planet, called Proxima d, orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of about four million kilometers, less than a tenth of Mercury’s distance from the sun. It orbits the star and the habitable zone, the region around the star where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface, and takes just five days to complete one orbit around Proxima Centauri.
It is already known that the star hosts two other planets: Proxima b, a planet with a mass similar to that of Earth and orbiting the star every 11 days and located within the habitable zone, and Proxima c, which completes its orbit About a star every five years.
Proxima b was discovered a few years ago using the HARPS instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-meter telescope.
Confirmation of the discovery occurred in 2020 when scientists observed the “Proxima” system with a new instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), with greater accuracy, which is called “ESPRESSO”.
During observations of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and later, astronomers discovered the first hints of a signal corresponding to an object with a five-day orbit.
Because the signal was so weak, the team had to make follow-up observations with the ESPRESSO instrument to make sure it was due to a planet, and not just the result of changes in the star itself.
“After obtaining new observations, we were able to confirm this signal as a new candidate planet,” says Faria. “I was excited by the challenge of detecting such a small signal and, in doing so, discovering an exoplanet very close to Earth.”
At only a quarter of the mass of Earth, Proxima d is the lightest exoplanet ever measured using the radial velocity technique, surpassing a recently discovered planet in the L 98-59 planetary system.
The technology works by picking up tiny vibrations in the motion of a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
The gravitational effect of Proxima D is so small that it only causes Proxima Centauri to move back and forth at an estimated speed of about 40 centimeters per second (1.44 kilometers per hour).
Pedro Figueira, ESPRESSO Instrument Program Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile explains: “This achievement is very important. It shows that the radial velocity technique has the potential to detect a range of light planets, like ours, which are expected to be the most abundant. in our galaxy that could host life as we know it.”
“This result clearly shows what ESPRESSO can offer and makes me wonder what it might find in the future,” Faria adds.