A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri

At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red-dwarf Proxima Centauri ($\alpha$ Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890, or simply Proxima) is the Sun's closest stellar neighbor and one of the best studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only $\sim$ 3050 K, a luminosity of $\sim$0.1 per cent...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Anglada-Escudé, Guillem (Author) , Tsapras, Yiannis (Author)
Format: Article (Journal) Chapter/Article
Language:English
Published: 2016
In: Arxiv

Online Access:Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.03449
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Author Notes:Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Pedro J. Amado, John Barnes, Zaira M. Berdiñas, R. Paul Butler, Gavin A. L. Coleman, Ignacio de la Cueva, Stefan Dreizler, Michael Endl, Benjamin Giesers, Sandra V. Jeffers, James S. Jenkins, Hugh R. A. Jones, Marcin Kiraga, Martin Kürster, María J. López-González, Christopher J. Marvin, Nicolás Morales, Julien Morin, Richard P. Nelson, José L. Ortiz, Aviv Ofir, Sijme-Jan Paardekooper, Ansgar Reiners, Eloy Rodríguez, Cristina Rodríguez-López, Luis F. Sarmiento, John P. Strachan, Yiannis Tsapras, Mikko Tuomi, Mathias Zechmeister
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Summary:At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red-dwarf Proxima Centauri ($\alpha$ Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890, or simply Proxima) is the Sun's closest stellar neighbor and one of the best studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only $\sim$ 3050 K, a luminosity of $\sim$0.1 per cent solar, a measured radius of 0.14 R$_\odot$ and a mass of about 12 per cent the mass of the Sun. Although Proxima is considered a moderately active star, its rotation period is $\sim$ 83 days, and its quiescent activity levels and X-ray luminosity are comparable to the Sun's. New observations reveal the presence of a small planet orbiting Proxima with a minimum mass of 1.3~Earth masses and an orbital period of $\sim$11.2 days. Its orbital semi-major axis is $\sim0.05$ AU, with an equilibrium temperature in the range where water could be liquid on its surface.
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