The dreams of Alpha Centauri I used to have as a boy all focused on visual effects. After all, the distance between Centauri A and B ranges from 11.4 to 36.0 AU. What would it be like to have a second star in our Solar System, one that occasionally closed to a little...
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Geoff Marcy: Mission to Alpha Centauri
The Tau Zero Foundation is pleased to announce that planet hunter extraordinaire Geoffrey Marcy is now affiliated with the organization. As a Tau zero practitioner, Dr. Marcy will serve as a major point of contact on exoplanet issues, bringing with him the most...
Decelerating at Alpha Centauri
As we await results from ongoing observations of the Alpha Centauri stars, let's summarize for a moment what we currently know. While the subject is still up for debate, a number of studies have suggested that terrestrial planets can form around either Centauri A or...
Alpha Centauri Hunt Intensifies
I love Greg Laughlin's remark to the Washington Post's Joel Achenbach in last week's article Astronomers Seek New Home Closer to Home. Having discussed Debra Fischer's ongoing search for Alpha Centauri planets and his own theories on planet formation around binary...
Alpha Centauri Back in the News
Here I was all set to write about the discovery of carbon dioxide on HD 189733b when Alpha Centauri made its way back into the news. Twentieth Century Fox will be transmitting the re-make of the science fiction classic The Day The Earth Stood Still to Alpha Centauri...
Alpha Centauri and the Long Haul
Projects that take more than a single generation to complete -- the Ultimate Project that would build a multi-generational starship is a classic example -- keep the issue of long-term thinking bubbling in these pages. The immense distances to the stars almost force...
Alpha Centauri in Context
If we're finding planets in places 1500 light years away, as the TrES project just did, why don't we know more about planets in the Alpha Centauri system? One problem is that Centauri A and B are relatively close to each other, with a semimajor axis of 23.4 AU....
Excluding Alpha Centauri Planets
You would think Alpha Centauri would be a prime hunting ground for extrasolar planets simply because of its proximity. But the problem for direct imaging is the sheer brightness of Centauri A and B, creating a halo of diffuse light around the pair. Getting through the...
A Relativistic Probe to Alpha Centauri
Good space science comes from unexpected quarters. When I interviewed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's James Lesh about his thinking on communicating with a probe around Alpha Centauri, he pointed out how much can be gained by simply studying the signal sent by a...
Viewing Alpha Centauri
Last Saturday's image of Proxima Centauri raised questions for several readers, who asked where Centauri A and B were in the photograph. The answer is that they are not in the field of view. To get a broader perspective, let's step back a bit. In the image below, I'm...