The triple star system of Alpha Centauri is only 4.3 light - yr — about 25 trillion mile — away . The possibleness of an worldly concern - corresponding world orbiting our penny-pinching neighbour has been a kind of holy grail of uranology — and something taken for granted by countless SciFi authors .
Happily for everyone , uranologist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile recently key out a satellite with a mass standardised to that of the earth orbiting the sun - like Alpha Centauri B. Indeed , Alpha Centauri Bb is the first satellite with an earth - like mass ever come up orbiting a sun - similar superstar .
creative person ’s concept of Alpha Centauri B and its satellite , with Alpha Centauri A and our Sunday .
Of the three stars in the arrangement — Alpha Centauri A , B and Proxima — the latter is actually the ace closest to our own . Proxima Centauri is a scarlet dwarf while the the two prominent stars , A and B , are alike to our Lord’s Day , with B being slenderly smaller and dimmer .
The planet orbit Alpha Centauri B has a the great unwashed only slightly more than the ground ’s . In fact , it is the tripping exoplanet yet key out . Unfortunately for any Leslie Townes Hope of finding lifetime on this world , it revolve only about four million statute mile away . More than ten times closer than the distance between Mercury and our sun , and 23 multiplication closer than the dry land . This would make Alpha Centauri B more than twenty times larger in the satellite ’s sky than the sun is here on globe … and more than 500 time brighter and hotter .
In the illustration at the top of this page , Alpha Centauri B dominate the sky . Just above it to the right field is a very bright star : Alpha Centauri A. And above that to the rightfield is another star : our sunshine .
stargazer using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher ( HARPS ) at ESO ’s La Silla Observatory in Chile discovered the planet by notice the tiny wobble it causes in the motion of Alpha Centauri B as it orbits the star . The movement is minute — a escargot ’s gait 1.8 km / time of day . This discovery entailed the high precision ever achieved using this particular technique .
example by Ron Miller .
distance
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