James Webb Telescope Just Announced The Clearest Image of Proxima B Seen in History
#jameswebbspacetelescope #proximab #jameswebbtelescope #jwst
It took a while before Proxima b was discovered.
Since more than 15 years ago, astronomers have been actively looking for planets near Proxima Centauri using equipment like the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES), both of which are mounted on telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The exoplanet Proxima b, which revolves around the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, is seen in this artist's impression. The view between the exoplanet and its star shows the twin star Alpha Centauri AB.
Researchers can see the tiny jerks in a star's motion brought on by planets' gravitational pulls using devices like UVES, HARPS, and others.
Astronomers first suspected such a wobble in 2013, but the evidence was insufficient, according to Anglada-Escude. He therefore started a hunt for the planet with a number of other academics. As an homage to Carl Sagan's famous description of Earth as a "pale blue dot," and because Proxima Centauri is a tiny, dim star classified as a red dwarf, they gave their project the name Pale Red Dot.
From January 19, 2016, to March 31, this year, the Pale Red Dot team pointed HARPS at Proxima Centauri every night. The signal of a potential planet was clearly audible after scientists integrated this new data with UVES observations from 2000 through 2008 and HARPS observations from 2005 through early 2014.
Anglada-Escude and his colleagues next disregarded the notion that this signal could have been brought on by the varied activity of Proxima Centauri by examining studies of the star's brightness made by a number of different telescopes.
The conclusion is that we have discovered a planet around Proxima Centauri, Anglada-Escude stated at a news conference on Tuesday.
How, in a time when scientists are discovering exoplanet thousands of light-years away from Earth, could Proxima b go undiscovered for so long?
The new research was published online today (Aug. 24) in the journal Nature. "The uneven and sparse sampling, combined with the longer-term variability of the star, seems to be the reasons why the signal could not be unambiguously confirmed with pre-2016 data, rather than the total amount of data accumulated," the authors wrote.
The information supports rumors that German magazine Der Spiegel originally published earlier this month.
In addition, the scientists may have found evidence for a second planet in the Proxima Centauri system, which would have an orbit that lasts between 60 and 500 days. However, the second signal is much weaker and may be the result of stellar activity, according to the researchers.
Topics Covered in this Video-:
james webb telescope
james webb space telescope
james webb telescope pictures
nasa
james webb
space
james webb telescope discovery
james webb telescope news
james webb telescope launch nasa
nasa's james webb telescope
space telescope
science
webb telescope
jwst
universe
james webb news
space exploration
galaxies
space news
jwst new photos
james webb space telescope update
space telescope james webb
telescope james webb
proxima b
james webb telescope proxima b
james webb proxima b
proxima b aliens
proxima centauri
discovery on proxima b
life on proxima b
proxima b temperature
proxima b planet
proxima b james webb
universe
