We can measure interstellar distances, but can we really grasp them? The distance to the nearest stars is so immense that even the scientists who study such things have resorted to homely comparisons. The most charming to my mind is that of the English astronomer Sir...
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Terrestrial Worlds in the Alpha Centauri System?
More than half of all main sequence stars occur in multiple star systems, and we've already found 19 planets in such systems (Tau Bootis and 55 Rho Cancri are examples). But most of our models of planetary formation have been based upon single stars. Are planets...
Quantifying the Centauri Stream
The timescales we talk about on Centauri Dreams always catch up with me in amusing ways. As in a new paper out of Western University (London, Ontario), in which astrophysicists Cole Gregg and Paul Wiegert discuss the movement of materials from Alpha Centauri into...
On Astronomical Accidents, and the Proxima Centauri ‘Signal’ that Wasn’t
One night a few years back I had a late night call from a friend who was involved in Breakthrough Starshot, the attempt to design a probe that could reach nearby stars and return data with transit times of decades rather than centuries. His news was surprising. The...
Tightening Proxima Centauri’s Orbit (and an Intriguing Speculation)
Although I think most astronomers have assumed Proxima Centauri was bound to the central binary at Alpha Centauri, the case wasn’t definitively made until fairly recently. Here we turn to Pierre Kervella (Observatoire de Paris), Frédéric Thévenin (Côte d’Azur...
Braking at Centauri: A Bound Orbit at Proxima?
One of the great problems of lightsail concepts for interstellar flight is the need to decelerate. Here I’m using lightsail as opposed to ‘solar sail’ in the emerging consensus that a solar sail is one that reflects light from our star, and is thus usable within the...
Proxima Centauri: Microlensing Yields New Data
It’s not easy teasing out information about a tiny red dwarf star, even when it’s the closest star to the Sun. Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes (1861-1933), a Scottish astronomer, found Proxima using a blink comparator in 1915, noting a proper motion similar to Alpha...
Modeling a Habitable Planet at Centauri A/B
Why is it so difficult to detect planets around Alpha Centauri? Proxima Centauri is one thing; we’ve found interesting worlds there, though this small, dim star has been a tough target, examined through decades of steadily improving equipment. But Centauri A and B,...
Proxima Centauri: Transits Amidst the Flares?
Discovered in 1915, Proxima Centauri has been a subject of considerable interest ever since, as you would expect of the star nearest to our own. But I had no idea research into planets around Proxima went all the way back to the 1930s. Nonetheless, a new paper from...
TOLIMAN Targets Centauri A/B Planets
We talked about the TOLIMAN mission last April, and the renewed interest in astrometry as the key to ferreting out possible planets around Alpha Centauri A and B. I was fortunate enough to hear Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney), who leads the team that has been...