Alpha Centauri

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given us this stunning view of the bright Alpha Centauri A (on the left) and Alpha Centauri B (on the right), shining like huge cosmic headlamps in the dark.

Hay una alta probabilidad de que otros planetas orbiten la estrella Alpha centauri B, y tal vez exista alguno en la zona habitable de condiciones aun mas cercanas a las de la Tierra.

3 light years from the Sun, Alpha Centauri B is only a step away in astronomical terms.

Training their telescope at Alpha Centauri B, the team logged more than 450 days of observation.

That means that in the star system Alpha Centauri B, a just-right planet could be closer than astronomers had once imagined.

Polyphemis: An enormous planet, a gas giant almost twice the size of Jupiter, which in turn orbits the yellow sun of Alpha Centauri B.

The stars' names: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Alpha Centauri C.

European astronomers claim in the October 18th Nature that they have discovered an Earth-mass planet tightly orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a yellow-orange K1 star about 85% as luminous as the Sun in the closest stellar system to ours.

Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.

The rocky planet circles Alpha Centauri B, a star just a bit smaller and dimmer than the sun.

Today's best instruments might barely detect the tiny perturbation that an Earth twin would induce in Alpha Centauri B.

Brian Wood and Jeffrey Linsky (University of Colorado) and Gary Zank and Hans Mueller (Bartol Research Institute) used the Hubble Space Telescope to analyze an ultraviolet spectral line of Alpha Centauri B, the dimmer member of the famous binary star just 4.