Orbital Differences Between Earth and Proxima Centauri b

  • Released Thursday, January 23, 2020
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Proxima Centauri b is the closest exoplanet to Earth. It is only four light years away. It's star is a red dwarf that is much smaller than our Sun. However, it is much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun. It also orbits around it's star at a much faster rate than Earth.

Earth's orbit around the sun takes 365 days to complete.

Earth's orbit around the sun takes 365 days to complete.

Background image comparing the relative sizes of our Sun to Proxima B's star. Proxima Centauri's radius is approximately 7 times smaller than our Sun's radius.



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NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Release date

This page was originally published on Thursday, January 23, 2020.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:10 AM EDT.


Related papers

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017arXiv170902051D/abstract

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017arXiv170902051D/abstract