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In 1998, an examination of Proxima Centauri using the Faint Object Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope appeared to show evidence of a companion orbiting at a distance of about 0.5 AU.[75] However, a subsequent search using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 failed to locate any companions.[21] Proxima Centauri, along with Alpha Centauri A and B, was among the "Tier 1" target stars for NASA's now-canceled Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), which would theoretically have been able to detect planets as small as three Earth-masses (M⊕) within two AU of a "Tier 1" target star.[23]
originally posted by: stormbringer1701
revisiting this thread because there has been at least one instrument that had a preliminary detection of a planet at Proxima. it is old news but i just ran across it now and the topic had come up again elsewhere. this is what happens when the search feature cannot find the thread you are looking for.
Hubble made a preliminary finding of a planet at .5 AU orbiting Proxima. Other instruments have so far failed to replicate the observation. Thus the observation remains unconfirmed, -to me that is not the same as being refuted or debunked.
en.wikipedia.org...
In 1998, an examination of Proxima Centauri using the Faint Object Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope appeared to show evidence of a companion orbiting at a distance of about 0.5 AU.[75] However, a subsequent search using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 failed to locate any companions.[21] Proxima Centauri, along with Alpha Centauri A and B, was among the "Tier 1" target stars for NASA's now-canceled Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), which would theoretically have been able to detect planets as small as three Earth-masses (M⊕) within two AU of a "Tier 1" target star.[23]
Note that except in unusual circumstances earth sized planets or smaller are below the threshold of detection for all instruments to date so for all we know there could be a gabillion of them orbiting such stars as Proxima, AC a AC b Barnards star, Wolf 359, Ross's star, Lelande and so on.
Proxima is the closest star to us and it is unlikely that there are any more true stars (even though red dwarfs are kind of hard to spot) lurking closer as yet undiscovered though "room temperature" Y type brown dwarfs are not out of the question entirely. Point being; Proxima is likely the first real star we will get to if the justification was there. Even if we decide that Alpha Centauri A or B are the true target of our first probes those probes would have to go by Proxima to get to them; so any such mission would probably include a flyby of Proxima anyway since it would be essentially a freeby for probes on that trajectory.
(Image: Photo of Proxima Centauri from the Hubble Space Telescope)
originally posted by: stormbringer1701
ATTENTION to planets hiding close to their parent stars: Gotcha suckers!
phys.org...
new technique allows stealthy planets to be seen. this means planets in the life zones will be easier to find. beta centarus b for example in the photographs in the article.
EDIT: to be clear Beta Centauri is not alpha centaurus B. instead it is about 350 light years away.
also the article does not give the lower mass limit for the new technique but instead says it works for planets smaller than jupiter. still at 350 LY i would hope that the lower bound is very much lower than that for stars within ten light years or so. one can hope. maybe JS can provide a realistic lower mass bound for such circumstances.
originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: JadeStar
(Image: Photo of Proxima Centauri from the Hubble Space Telescope)
Hubble sees PC as only one pixel, as it does all other supposed stars. The images that show more than one pixel are by way of some fancy formulas and a lot of number crunching.
Astronomy, by definition, is a pseudoscience,
and there is no proof that even the nearest stars to us are stars at all,
and PC is most likely a planet, and any supposed planets around it may just be moons around a planet, not planets around a star.
BTW: Betelgeuse easily fills plenty of pixels and has been resolved well beyond a point source with with Hubble:
originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: JadeStar
BTW: Betelgeuse easily fills plenty of pixels and has been resolved well beyond a point source with with Hubble:
Betelgeuse is 5 pixels to Hubble, that image is a little more than 5 pixels. So how do they arrive at that image?
And what is Hubble seeing? Why is it the spectral lines are assumed to be from thermal excitation, when we know that there are lines from fluorescence?