François Chung, Ph.D.

Planet spotted close to the sun

Reddit post & Popularity

Chung, François [u/fchung]. “Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star.” Reddit, 12 March 2022, www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/tce083/earthlike_planet_spotted_orbiting_suns_closest.

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Related news & Summary

Castelvecchi, Davide. “Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star.” Nature, 10 February 2022, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00400-3.

Astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. Called Proxima Centauri d, this planet is likely smaller than Earth and may have liquid water oceans. Proxima Centauri d was detected by measuring tiny changes in Proxima Centauri's light spectrum as the planets' gravity pulled it during orbit. This discovery was made thanks to a state-of-the-art instrument called ESPRESSO (Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations), which was used at the Very Large Telescope (Chile).

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