“This achievement is extremely important,” said Pedro Figueira, an author of the study. With a mass just one quarter that of Earth, Proxima d is now the lightest exoplanet ever discovered using this method. In this case, that wobble was tiny, moving Proxima Centauri back and forth at about 1.44 km/h (0.89 mph), meaning it took follow-up observations to confirm it wasn’t just the star itself changing. Proxima d was discovered using the radial velocity technique, which involves watching for slight wobbles of a star produced by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets. That makes it a bit too close to be in the habitable zone. Proxima d, as it’s known, is actually closer to the star than its siblings, orbiting every five days at a distance about one-tenth of Mercury’s distance from the Sun. Both of these planets orbit within the star's habitable zone, where temperatures are just right for liquid water to potentially gather on the surface.Īnd now astronomers have detected signs of a third planet in the system. A few years later, hints of a second planet arose, with a mass of about six Earths and a five-year orbit. In 2016 the first exoplanet in the system was discovered – Proxima b, an Earth-sized world that orbits the star every 11 days. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star just four light-years away from us, in the constellation Centaurus. This tiny new world is one of the lightest ever discovered, which is even more impressive given the technique the team used to find it. Astronomers may have detected a new exoplanet around Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our solar system.
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