A new planet called Proxima was found orbiting the closest star to our Sun says scientists, about just a quarter of the mass of Earth.
Astronomers have found another planet is the next star system along. Called “Proxima d,” it’s the third planet found orbiting Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star just 4.24 light-years from the Sun, discovered by a team of astronomers using the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
It took over two years of observations to find Proxima d. and although Proxima d is closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun—so unlikely to host liquid water—its status as the lightest exoplanet ever discovered gives astronomers hope of more easily finding Earth-like planets.
Low-mass planets such as Proxima d are predicted to be the most abundant in our galaxy and could potentially host life as we know it.
Just a quarter of the mass of Earth, Proxima d orbits Proxima Centauri from 2.4 million miles/four million kilometers and completes an orbit in just five days.
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