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Post Info TOPIC: Proxima Centauri
Blobrana


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Proxima b
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Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star

Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us - and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016.
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Blobrana


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RE: Proxima Centauri
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Rare Stellar Alignment Offers Opportunity to Hunt for Planets

Hubble astronomers have found that Proxima Centauri will pass in front of two far-more distant background stars, once in 2014 and again in 2016. This will afford a very rare opportunity to see how Proxima's gravity warps the image of the background stars by bending their light. This effect, called gravitational lensing, can be used to estimate Proxima Centauri's mass and establish the presence of any planets orbiting the star.
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Blobrana


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Title: The moderate magnetic field on the flare star Proxima Centauri
Authors: Ansgar Reiners, Gibor Basri

We report moderate magnetic flux of 450G < Bf < 750G (3sigma) on the nearby M5.5 flare star Proxima Centauri. A high resolution UVES spectrum was used to measure magnetic flux from Zeeman broadening in absorption lines of molecular FeH around 1mu. The magnetic flux we find is relatively weak compared with classical strong flare stars, but so are Proxima's flaring rates and actual emission levels. We compare what is known about the rotation rate, Rossby number, and activity levels in this star to relations between these quantities that have been recently being developed more generally for M dwarfs. We conclude that the magnetic flux is higher than the best estimates of the Rossby number from period measurements. On the other hand, the activity levels on Proxima Centauri are at the high end of what could be expected based on the measured field, but not so high as to exceed the natural scatter in these relations (other stars lie along this high envelope as well).

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