Proxima Centauri Research Paper

July 29, 2005: "It's definitely bigger than Pluto." So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of

This article discusses a new planet that could end up supporting life. This new planet is called Proxima b because it orbits a star called Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are composed of “a cloud of dust and gas that is drawn together by gravity and begins rotating.” (Reed, 2016) They are called dwarfs because they only weigh “7.5 to 50 percent of the mass of the sun.” (Reed, 2016) Since these stars are small, they only reach up to 6,380 degrees Fahrenheit. Red dwarf stars can last trillions of years. “Their limited light and heat meant that the habitable zone-the region where liquid water could form, and thus life would be considered most likely to evolve.” (Reed, 2016) Proxima Centauri is an example of

This breakthrough made me realize what the continuous advancements hold for us in the future. The subsequent astronomical explorations promise a great deal of knowledge that would be able to provide answers for our “centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth” (NASA, 2015). The future of astronomy seems bright and now it is up to the next generation to keep that light

In 1915, Scottish astronomer Robert Innes discovered Proxima Centauri. Since his discovery, scientists have gathered more information regarding the star and have concluded that Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. Before any sort of facts or information were found, Proxima Centauri didn't exist. Well, more like no astronomer nor scientist had an idea of the star's existence, so how exactly did Innes find Proxima?

The first and most obvious thing to talk about is how it was formed. It began as an oversized mass left behind after the big bang. The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. over densities were the seeds of global clusters that formed many of our galaxies. Within a few billion years after the first birth of the star, these over densities had enough mass to be spinning relatively fast. As the gravitational pull, pulled stars towards it, it began to gain size and mass. So how long has it been formed ? Based on a process of nucleo cosmochronology, it it said to be 12.5 ± 3 billion to 13.8 ± 4 billion years old. That is a lot of time to gain mass, and to form into a galaxy.

Then red dwarf star that was discovered by Michal Gillion and his team with the spencer telescope. Once they discovered this star that is a lot small and colder than our sun, it allowed them to get a vision of the seven planets. The star is about 40 light years away. There are not 3 or four planets but there are 7 earth like planets.

seen day and night in the sky. It is now known as the crab nebula, and is a breeding ground for smaller stars. Another way for a supernova to be created, is when a white dwarf siphons off hydrogen from another star to the point where it will become unstable and explode.

The star Proxima Centauri is interesting because besides form the sun it is the closest star to earth, measuring to be about 4.3 light-years away. It also has an exoplanet named Proxima b that obits around it. Scientist studied how the flares emitted by the star would affect the orbiting exoplanet. It’s assumed that Proxima b would have been blasted with radiation during the flares over billions of years since the exoplanet was formed. Flares like this could have evaporated any oceans or atmospheres, and

In 1781 the British astronomer, William Herschel, was doing a survey of all the stars. He noticed an unusual piece of matter in the sky. He later discovered that the matter was the planet Uranus. Since that discovery there has been other discoveries concerning the planet. One of these discoveries has been the discovery of two irregular moons.

Have you heard about New Horizon’s impending flyby of Pluto? As the spaceship gets closer, it will take pictures of Pluto. Scientists hope that New Horizons will provide new information about the dwarf planet.

Many physical properties of stars can be found by using a little bit of light. One property of a star is luminosity. Luminosity is the quantity of energy created in a star and then released as electromagnetic radiation. The brightness of a star is a blend of luminosity and distance of a star and can also depend on the quantity of energy absorbed in the direction of a star. Another property of a star is distance. Astronomers use parallax to establish the distance to an object. As Earth travels around the Sun, they monitor neighboring stars from various positions. They are then able to measure how much the star seems to move to establish the distance to the star.

- Discuss stellar evolution (describing each stage in brief). What forces are opposing one another throughout the life of a star and how do they influence the various stages in the life cycle of a star

What creeps in the night sky hiding far away silently? About 4 billion miles away from the sun. So far away that we cannot see it with just our eyes. To be found, extremely powerful telescopes need to be used. It’s as mysterious as it is large. Larger than human, but smaller than our moon. It was even named after the Greek god of the underworld by an eleven-year-old girl from Venetia Burney, England. That’s right, it’s the one and only, Pluto.

The new planet is known as HD 219134b and it followed NASA's discovery of the planet Kepler-452b, discovered by the Kepler telescope. The Kepler-452b apparently resembles Earth much more than the HD 219134b exoplanet. It maintains a 385 orbit and its host star is only 20 percent brighter than the Earth's sun. However, HD 219134b is much closer to Earth than the Kepler-452b, and for that reason, scientists have high expectations from it.

b. Jennifer Rosenberg in her article Pluto Discovered writes, “It took a year of detailed, painstaking work, but Tombaugh did find Planet X. The discovery occurred on February 18, 1930 while Tombaugh was carefully examining a set of photographic plates created by the telescope”. Tombaugh officially announced the discovery of the ninth planet on March 13, 1930.