

As of 2021, it is unclear whether or not it has an eccentricity but Proxima Centauri b is unlikely to have any obliquity. It orbits Proxima Centauri every 11.186 Earth days at a distance of about 0.049 au, over 20 times closer to Proxima Centauri than Earth is to the Sun. Proxima Centauri b is the closest exoplanet to Earth, at a distance of about 4.2 ly. Physical properties Overview and comparison of the orbital distance of the habitable zones of Proxima Centauri compared to the Solar System. Another planet candidate named Proxima Centauri c was reported in 2020, but its existence has since been disputed, while the claimed existence of a dust belt around Proxima Centauri remains unconfirmed. In 2022, another planet named Proxima Centauri d, which orbits even closer to the star, was confirmed.

On 24 August 2016, the team led by Anglada-Escudé proposed that a terrestrial exoplanet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri could explain these anomalies and announced Proxima Centauri b's discovery. In January 2016, a team of astronomers launched the Pale Red Dot project to confirm this hypothetical planet's existence.

This suggested that Proxima Centauri may be orbited by a planet. īefore 2016, observations with instruments at the European Southern Observatory in Chile had identified anomalies in Proxima Centauri which could not be satisfactorily explained by flares or chromospheric activity of the star. Additionally, red dwarfs are by far the most common type of stars. Planets are very common around dwarf stars, with on average 1–2 planets per star, and about 20–40% of all red dwarfs have one in the habitable zone. Proxima Centauri had become a target for exoplanet searches already before the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, but initial studies in 20 ruled out the existence of larger-than-Earth exoplanets in the habitable zone. The amplitude and period of the motion were used to estimate the planet's minimum mass. The red symbols with black error bars represent data points, and the blue curve is a fit of the data. Discovery Velocity of Proxima Centauri towards and away from the Earth as measured with the HARPS spectrograph during the first three months of 2016. Furthermore, the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, a planet at habitable distances from the closest star to the Solar System, was a major discovery in planetology and has drawn interest to the Alpha Centauri star system as a whole, of which Proxima itself is a member. The planet's proximity to Earth offers an opportunity for robotic space exploration, for example, with the Breakthrough Starshot project.Īnnounced on 24 August 2016 by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Proxima Centauri b was confirmed via several years of using the method of studying the radial velocity of its parent star. Proxima Centauri is a flare star with intense emission of electromagnetic radiation that could strip an atmosphere off the planet. The planet orbits within the habitable zone of its star but it is not known whether it has an atmosphere. Its other properties are only poorly understood, but it is believed to be a potentially Earth-like planet with a minimum mass of at least 1.07 M 🜨 and only a slightly larger radius than that of Earth.

Proxima Centauri b orbits its parent star at a distance of roughly 0.05 AU (7.5 million km 4.6 million mi) with an orbital period of approximately 11.2 Earth days. It is about 4.2 ly (1.3 pc) from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, making it, along with the currently-disputed Proxima c, and Proxima d the closest known exoplanets to the Solar System. Proxima Centauri b (or Proxima b ), sometimes referred to as Alpha Centauri Cb, is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of the larger triple star system Alpha Centauri.
