Starship Asterisk*

The astronomy picture displayed dec 4 2005 is, like all your pictures,truely amazing and a thrill to see just as it was on jul 15 2002 when you first posted it.Thanks again.

That would be;
Dec. 04, 2005
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051204.html

and, July 15, 2002
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020715.html

How many times has that distance changed over the decades since it's discovery?

Norval

Wonder what the sun would look like when seen from Proxima Centauri ? Same type of star about the same age I presume ?

Is there a (roughly circular) area of reddening around Proxima?

Is it an artefact? Is it dust absorpsion? Am I imagining things?

ta152h0 wrote:Wonder what the sun would look like when seen from Proxima Centauri ? Same type of star about the same age I presume ?

It would look like Alpha Centauri, and this star is very similar to our sun. Proxima is a lot smaller.

and if seen from Proxima Centauri, would the nine planets of the Sun be also seen ? other than Pluto. If the answer is yes, the third question would be can planets be seen at Proxima Centauri if they exist ???

Recent findings suggest that even Brown Dwarfs may have the capacity to develop planets? (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0511/29tiniest/)

Directly viewing another star or brown dwarf's planets will have to wait a decade or so... when the 'Planetary Finder' mission is launched.

Proxima Centuri is a Red Dwarf star with a diameter approx. 1/20 the size of our sun. One of the smallest stars known, it is 1/3 the size of Jupiter, though its mass is much greater.

The only reason we can see it at all, is because it is so close...

ta152h0
with the right technology, yes they would be visible and no, we don't currently have technology like that... and although planets can be detected indirectly through gravitational micro lensing and doppler shifting, these techniques currently require the planets to be both very large and at relatively small orbital distances - which sorta rules out the Sol system for now.

ta152h0 wrote:and if seen from Proxima Centauri, would the nine planets of the Sun be also seen ? other than Pluto. If the answer is yes, the third question would be can planets be seen at Proxima Centauri if they exist ???

Currently not a chance. Using the same sort of distance scale it would be like standing and one end of a football stadium and seeing an individual eyebrow hair on a person at the opposite end...

The distances between stars is vast compared to the distance between planets.

see here for more scale comparisons...

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... c&start=17

standing and one end of a football stadium and seeing an individual eyebrow hair on a person at the opposite end

Is that like a satellite image from space of someone in the Middle East and reading the time on their wrist watch in the image?

ZeroImpactAU wrote:Is there a (roughly circular) area of reddening around Proxima?

Is it an artefact? Is it dust absorpsion? Am I imagining things?

I see it too. Try importing it into some photo editing program and cranking the saturation way up.... really brings it out.

It looks like reddening due to dust absorption, but I could be wrong. However, Proxima Centauri IS a flare star, so maybe it threw off a shell of material at some point. Do flare stars do that?


Cropped image with the saturation turned way up.