Good post. You have covered all the important details. The team spotted Proxima d using ESPRESSO (“Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations”), an instrument installed on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. ESPRESSO finds planets via the radial velocity technique, by the slight wobbles in a star’s motion induced by the gravitational tug of an orbiting world. That would make Proxima d the
lightest planet ever detected using the radial velocity method.
Normally Alpha Centauri is not just considered as a star but a Star System of three stars. The dimmest - Proxima Centauri - is actually the nearest star to the Sun. The two bright stars, called Alpha Centauri A and B form a close binary system; they are separated by only 23 times the Earth - Sun distance. This is slightly greater than the distance between Uranus and the Sun.
There's another famous star nearby - Barnard's Star - discovered in 1916. It's about 6 light years away with an apparent brightness of about 9.5 and hence cannot be seen with the naked eye. If we take the Alpha Centauri system as one star, that makes Barnards star the second nearest to us.
It's often referred to as
"Barnard’s Runaway Star" – and holds a speed record as the fastest-moving star in Earth’s skies.
(NOTE: Though it's not much noticeable, all stars does move around. Because the entire Galaxy rotates and the stars are in orbit around its center. This rate is different from one star to another - how fast they orbit can depend on where the star is located within the Galaxy. Our Sun, being fairly far from the Galactic Center, takes over 200 million years to circle the Galaxy once.)
Barnard’s Star moves 10.3 arcseconds per year - virtually zipping past. Barnard's star is just passing through our area. It's Red Dwarf with and scientists are 99% confident that it has one planet.
What's interesting is that Barnard's Star is approaching the Sun so rapidly that
around 11,700 AD, it will be
3.8 light years from the Sun - and thus
the closest star to our own.
The animation below shows the movement of Barnard's Star across the sky from 1985 to 2005.
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