A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri
Abstract
At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red-dwarf Proxima Centauri ( Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890, or simply Proxima) is the Sun's closest stellar neighbor and one of the best studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only 3050 K, a luminosity of 0.1 per cent solar, a measured radius of 0.14 R and a mass of about 12 per cent the mass of the Sun. Although Proxima is considered a moderately active star, its rotation period is 83 days, and its quiescent activity levels and X-ray luminosity are comparable to the Sun's. New observations reveal the presence of a small planet orbiting Proxima with a minimum mass of 1.3~Earth masses and an orbital period of 11.2 days. Its orbital semi-major axis is AU, with an equilibrium temperature in the range where water could be liquid on its surface.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.03449,
title = {A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri},
author = {Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Pedro J. Amado and John Barnes and Zaira M. Berdiñas and R. Paul Butler and Gavin A. L. Coleman and Ignacio de la Cueva and Stefan Dreizler and Michael Endl and Benjamin Giesers and Sandra V. Jeffers and James S. Jenkins and Hugh R. A. Jones and Marcin Kiraga and Martin Kürster and María J. López-González and Christopher J. Marvin and Nicolás Morales and Julien Morin and Richard P. Nelson and José L. Ortiz and Aviv Ofir and Sijme-Jan Paardekooper and Ansgar Reiners and Eloy Rodríguez and Cristina Rodríguez-López and Luis F. Sarmiento and John P. Strachan and Yiannis Tsapras and Mikko Tuomi and Mathias Zechmeister},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.03449},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Version accepted for publication by Nature (unedited, July 7th, 2016), figures inserted in text for easier read. Article body : 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Methods section : 23 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. IMPORTANT NOTE : Acknowledgment to IAA/CSIC researchers Javier Pascual Granado and Rafael Garrido added for useful discussions and feedback on the mathematical properties of time-series