Tag: Proxima Centauri
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Five years after Pluto encounter, New Horizons probe does a far-out parallax experiment
Queen guitarist (and astrophysicist) Brian May, a member of the New Horizons science team, uses his patented OWL viewer to check out the stereo images of Proxima Centauri that he created by combining pictures from Earth-based telescopes and the New Horizons spacecraft. (Photo courtesy of Brian May, via New Horizons / JHUAPL / SwRI /…
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3-D climate modeling could fine-tune the search for faraway signs of alien life
An artist’s conception shows a hypothetical planet with two moons orbiting within the habitable zone of an M-dwarf star. (NASA / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Illustration / D. Aguilar) Astronomers have identified thousands of stars that have planets, and that number could mushroom even faster when waves of next-generation telescopes come online. But where are…
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Newfound dust belts suggest that Proxima Centauri has more than one alien planet
An artist’s impression shows the newly discovered belts of dust around Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system. This sketch is not to scale — to make Proxima b clearly visible, it has been shown farther from the star and larger than it is in reality. (ESO Illustration / M. Kornmesser) Astronomers created…
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Breakthrough Starshot tests smallest space probes for interstellar mission
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner holds a “Sprite” mini-probe like the ones that are being tested in low Earth orbit. (Breakthrough Starshot via YouTube / SciNews) Breakthrough Starshot says it’s been testing prototype interstellar spacecraft no bigger than postage stamps in orbit for the past month, and they seem to be working just fine. Six of…
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Seemingly strange radio signals from a red dwarf star spark interest at Arecibo
The 1,000-foot radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory played a role in the movie “Contact.” (UPRA Photo) The 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory will take a closer look at a red dwarf star known as Ross 128 after picking up what one astronomer said were “some very peculiar signals” during a 10-minute…
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Stephen Hawking lays out plan for settling space, from moon and Mars to the stars
Physicist Stephen Hawking addresses an audience at the Starmus Festival via video. (Starmus via YouTube) British physicist Stephen Hawking has repeatedly warned us that we have just a century or two to move off Earth, and he just shared his vision for how to do it. Hawking laid out a timetable this week during a…
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NASA’s Kepler space telescope points to 10 new planets in the habitable zone
An artist’s conception highlights the worlds detected by NASA’s Kepler probe. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration) Astronomers say they’ve used NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover 10 Earth-sized planet candidates where life could lurk. The 10 prospects are a part of a larger pool of 219 exoplanet candidates announced today. One of the newly detected candidates,…
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Very Large Telescope joins Breakthrough search for Alpha Centauri’s planets
The ESO’s Very Large Telescope looms in the foreground of this image, and a star map has been superimposed on the night sky to show the locations of Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri. (ESO Photo) One of the most powerful observing instruments on Earth, the Very Large Telescope, will join the search for potentially habitable…
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Breakthrough Watch: Alien-hunting effort takes telescopic aim at Proxima Centauri b
The European Extremely Large Telescope is one of the yet-to-be-built observatories that could target the nearest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, for direct imaging.. (Credit: ESO) GUADALAJARA, Mexico – A multimillion-dollar campaign to look for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations has added telescopic observations of the nearest known exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, to its agenda. Last month’s announcement…
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Proxima’s progress: Why it’ll take years to learn what closest exoplanet is really like
An artist’s conception shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b, with the red dwarf Proxima Centauri near the horizon. (Credi:t: M. Kornmesser / ESO) University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes says Proxima Centauri b is the biggest discovery in 20 years for planet hunters like himself, but it could take another 20…