Exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb by MagikUnicorn

Bryce • Space • posted on Feb 03, 2016

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Description

Alpha Centauri Bb was a proposed extrasolar planet orbiting the K-type main-sequence star Alpha Centauri B, located 4.37 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Its existence was announced in October 2012 by a team of European observers, and the finding received widespread media attention. However, the announcement was met with scepticism by some astronomers, who believed that the European team was over-interpreting its data. In October 2015, astronomers from the University of Oxford published a scientific paper denying the existence of the planet. They observed that an identical statistical analysis of randomly-generated synthetic data gave the same results as the actual astronomical data. This led Xavier Dumusque, the lead author of the original paper, to concede “We are not 100 percent sure, but probably the planet is not there.” Starting in February 2008, and continuing through July 2011, a team of European astronomers, mainly from the Observatory of Geneva and from the Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, recorded measurements of Alpha Centauri B's radial velocity with European Southern Observatory's HARPS echelle spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The team made 459 observations of Alpha Centauri B's color spectrum over a four-year period, then used statistical filters to remove known sources of variance. On 16 October 2012, the team announced they had detected an Earth-mass planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. The discovery was presented in the scientific journal Nature, with lead author credit going to Xavier Dumusque, a graduate student at the University of Porto. He called his findings "a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun". The team used the Doppler spectroscopy method to search for a planet. As the body orbits the host star, its gravity would cause extremely small (semi-amplitude of about 0.5 m/s) periodic shifts in the host star's velocity. Variations of the line-of-sight velocity component cause tiny shifts in the star's spectrum. Using an extremely sensitive spectrometer, the team was able to infer variations of 0.51 m/s in Alpha Centauri B's radial velocity. The ESO called the findings the most precise measurements ever recorded using the technique. The team estimated the probability of a spurious detection at 0.02%.

Comments (22)

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Cyve

5:56PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

What a fabulous creation my friend... Marvelous realization also !!!

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npauling

6:02PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

An excellent image and there is so much for us to learn about the universe isn't there. Thanks for the info.

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Freethinker56

6:02PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

WOW! lovely findings and a fantastic render

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Richardphotos

6:27PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

superb Bryce syfy. every thing works so well

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Faemike55

6:57PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

Fabulous work and cool information

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ArtistKimberly

8:11PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

Fantastic Work,

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DukeNukem2005

11:31PM | Wed, 03 February 2016

This is a very beautiful!

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giulband

12:20AM | Thu, 04 February 2016

Very well built scene !!!!

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BryceHoro Online Now!

1:41AM | Thu, 04 February 2016

Very nice space scene. It is not always easy to determine whether a finding is a real or imagined one when the result is so near the resolution of the instrument. If we don't search, we won't find.

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