Although I think most astronomers have assumed Proxima Centauri was bound to the central binary at Alpha Centauri, the case wasn’t definitively made until fairly recently. Here we turn to Pierre Kervella (Observatoire de Paris), Frédéric Thévenin (Côte d’Azur...
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The Odds on Alpha Centauri
How extraordinary that the nearest star to Earth is actually a triple system, the tight central binary visually merged as one bright object, the third star lost in the background field but still a relatively close 13000 or so AU from the others. Humans couldn’t have a...
Exoplanet Detection: Nudging Into the Rayleigh Limit
We’re building some remarkably large telescopes these days. Witness the Giant Magellan Telescope now under construction in Chile’s Atacama desert. It’s to be 200 times more powerful than any research telescope currently in use, with 368 square meters of light...
Braking at Centauri: A Bound Orbit at Proxima?
One of the great problems of lightsail concepts for interstellar flight is the need to decelerate. Here I’m using lightsail as opposed to ‘solar sail’ in the emerging consensus that a solar sail is one that reflects light from our star, and is thus usable within the...
Alpha Centauri: TOLIMAN Moves Forward
The problem with Alpha Centauri is that the system is too close. I don’t refer to its 4.3 light year distance from Sol, which makes these stars targets for future interstellar probes, but rather the distance of the two primary stars, Centauri A and B, from each other....
Proxima Centauri: Microlensing Yields New Data
It’s not easy teasing out information about a tiny red dwarf star, even when it’s the closest star to the Sun. Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes (1861-1933), a Scottish astronomer, found Proxima using a blink comparator in 1915, noting a proper motion similar to Alpha...
Modeling a Habitable Planet at Centauri A/B
Why is it so difficult to detect planets around Alpha Centauri? Proxima Centauri is one thing; we’ve found interesting worlds there, though this small, dim star has been a tough target, examined through decades of steadily improving equipment. But Centauri A and B,...
Proxima Centauri: Transits Amidst the Flares?
Discovered in 1915, Proxima Centauri has been a subject of considerable interest ever since, as you would expect of the star nearest to our own. But I had no idea research into planets around Proxima went all the way back to the 1930s. Nonetheless, a new paper from...
TOLIMAN Targets Centauri A/B Planets
We talked about the TOLIMAN mission last April, and the renewed interest in astrometry as the key to ferreting out possible planets around Alpha Centauri A and B. I was fortunate enough to hear Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney), who leads the team that has been...
A Path to Planet Formation in Binary Systems
How planets grow in double-star systems has always held a particular fascination for me. The reason is probably obvious: In my younger days, when no exoplanets had been discovered, the question of what kind of planetary systems were possible around multiple stars was...