Is Proxima Centauri Flying Solo?
Submit on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 13:07
X-Ray image of Proxima Centauri. Credit: ChandraClick to enlarge
If you want to send an interstellar probe, you’re going to chose the closest star. And that would be Proxima Centauri, located only 4.2 light years away. Since they first calculated its distance, astronomers have always assumed that Proxima Centauri was part of the Alpha Centauri triple star system. But recent calculations threw that assumption into doubt. Was its location purely a coincidence? Is Proxima Centauri flying solo through the Milky Way?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Astronomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
