M3
greg posted in exoplanet detection, worlds on February 12th, 2006
This post follows up post #14, The Next Big Thing.
In 1916, in circular #30 of South Africa’s Union Observatory , Robert T. A. Innes reported the discovery of a faint red star in Centaurus. This otherwise unremarkable star, more than 100 times too faint to be seen with the naked eye, attracted his attention because it was rapidly moving with respect to other stars in the same part of the sky. This large proper motion indicated that the star was almost certainly a close neighbor of the Sun, and in 1917, this suggestion was verified. The distance to the star was measured to be only 4.22 light years, closer to the Sun than any other known star. Its extremely faint appearance, in spite of its close proximity, made it the intrinsically least luminous star known to astronomy at that time.
Proxima Centauri, as the star was later named, is now known to be merely the nearest (and most famous) of the roughly 50 billion red dwarfs (also called M-dwarfs) which inhabit our galaxy.
What about planets? Is it possible to have a terrestrial planet in orbit around Proxima? Do red dwarfs have a shot at harboring life-bearing worlds? If such worlds exist can we detect them?
Yes.