Exoplanet Discoveries and Updates

[The Astronomer]

The paper on the inclination of Proxima c's orbit is released. Assuming prograde orbit, they arrived at 152+-14 degrees. This means Proxima c is roughly 2 times more massive than its minimum mass of 5.8 Earth masses. It is reasonable to assume that Proxima b is in the same orbital plane, in which case the planet would be 2.7 times more massive than Earth. I'll put this in my next Proxima draft, whenever that comes. (Btw the Architect, if you want to take this Buddhist system up, you're free to, although the Buddhism in this case not being Theravada might not be in your field, so... idk :/)



Interestingly, the orbit of Proxima c obtained from this work seems to agree with the disproven debris disk reported back in 2017.

The inclination of the dust rings identified by Anglada et al. (2017) (≈ 45°) from ALMA observations of Proxima is compatible with our derived inclination. The position angle of the major axis of the ring (≈ 140°) is also in agreement with the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbit of Proxima c