A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest yet discovered orbiting this star. At just a quarter of Earth’s mass, the planet is also one of the lightest exoplanets ever found.
This research was presented in the paper “A candidate short-period sub-Earth orbiting Proxima Centauri” (DOI) to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Read here the press release on the ESO website.
Image: © ESO/L. Calçada