A new planet discovered in its nearest stellar neighbour

Astronomers have discovered evidence of a third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star just 4.2 light years from our solar system.

The candidate world known as Proxima d is estimated to be just 25% more massive than Earth, making it one of the lightest known exoplanets, if confirmed.

Proxima d, makes one revolution around Proxima Centauri every five Earth days, suggesting that Proxima d is too hot for terrestrial life to exist on its surface, if the planet does exist.

The team detected Proxima d using ESPRESSO ("Eschelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations"), an instrument mounted on the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

ESPRESSO detected the first hints of a possible third world in the Proxima Centauri system in 2020, while making observations that confirmed the existence of Proxima b. Faria and his team then carried out follow-up measurements that suggested the new signal was generated by a planet, rather than other factors such as variable stellar activity.