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A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri

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Abstract

At a distance of 1.295 parsecs1, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri (α Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890 or simply Proxima) is the Sun’s closest stellar neighbour and one of the best-studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only around 3,050 kelvin, a luminosity of 0.15 per cent of that of the Sun, a measured radius of 14 per cent of the radius of the Sun2 and a mass of about 12 per cent of the mass of the Sun. Although Proxima is considered a moderately active star, its rotation period is about 83 days (ref. 3) and its quiescent activity levels and X-ray luminosity4 are comparable to those of the Sun. Here we report observations that reveal the presence of a small planet with a minimum mass of about 1.3 Earth masses orbiting Proxima with a period of approximately 11.2 days at a semi-major-axis distance of around 0.05 astronomical units. Its equilibrium temperature is within the range where water could be liquid on its surface5.

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Figure 1: Detection of a Doppler signal at 11.2 d.
Figure 2: All of the data sets phase-folded at the 11.2 d signal.
Figure 3: Time series obtained during the PRD campaign.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Gerlach, R. Street and U. Seemann for their support to the science preparations. We thank P. Micakovic, M. M. Mutter (QMUL), R. Ivison, G. Hussain, I. Saviane, O. Sandu, L. L. Christensen, R. Hook and the personnel at La Silla (ESO) for making the PRD campaign possible. The authors acknowledge support from the following funding grants: Leverhulme Trust/UK RPG-2014-281 (H.R.A.J., G.A.-E. and M.T.); MINECO/Spain AYA-2014-54348-C3-1-R (P.J.A., C.R.-L., Z.M.B. and E.R.); MINECO/Spain ESP2014-54362-P (M.J.L.-G.); MINECO/Spain AYA-2014-56637-C2-1-P (J.L.O. and N.M.); J.A./Spain 2012-FQM1776 (J.L.O. and N.M.); CATA-Basal/Chile PB06 Conicyt (J.S.J.); Fondecyt/Chile project #1161218 (J.S.J.); STFC/UK ST/M001008/1 (R.P.N., G.A.L.C. and G.A.-E.); STFC/UK ST/L000776/1 (J.B.); ERC/EU Starting Grant #279347 (A.R., L.F.S. and S.V.J.); DFG/Germany Research Grants RE 1664/9-2 (A.R.); RE 1664/12-1 (M.Z.); DFG/Germany Colloborative Research Center 963 (C.J.M. and S.D.); DFG/Germany Research Training Group 1351 (L.F.S.); and NSF/USA grant AST-1313075 (M.E.). Study based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under programmes 096.C-0082 and 191.C-0505. Observations were obtained with ASH2, which is supported by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía and Astroimagen. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. We acknowledge the effort of the UVES/M-dwarf and the HARPS/Geneva teams, who obtained a substantial amount of the data used in this work.

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Authors

Contributions

In the author list, after G.A.-E., the authors are listed in alphabetical order. G.A.-E. led the PRD campaign, observing proposals and organized the manuscript. P.J.A. led observing proposals and organized and supported the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucía team through research grants. M.T. obtained the early signal detections and most of the Bayesian analyses. J.S.J., J.B., Z.M.B. and H.R.A.J. participated in the analyses and obtained activity measurements. Z.M.B. also led observing proposals. H.R.A.J. funded several co-authors via research grants. M. Kuerster and M.E. provided the extracted UVES spectra, and R.P.B. re-derived radial velocity measurements. C.R.-L. coordinated photometric follow-up campaigns. E.R. led the ASH2 team and related reductions (M.J.L.-G., I.d.l.C., J.L.O. and N.M.). Y.T. led the LCOGT proposals, campaign and reductions. M.Z. obtained observations and performed analyses on HARPS and UVES spectra. A.O. analysed time series and transit searches. J.M., S.V.J. and A.R. analysed stellar activity data. A.R. funded several co-authors via research grants. R.P.N., G.A.L.C., S.-J.P., S.D. and B.G. did dynamical studies and studied the planet formation context. M. Kiraga provided early access to time series from the ASAS survey. C.J.M. and L.F.S. participated in the HARPS campaigns. All authors contributed to the preparation of observing proposals and the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guillem Anglada-Escudé.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Nature thanks A. Hatzes and D. Queloz for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Window function.

ac, Window function of the UVES (a), HARPS pre-2016 (b) and HARPS PRD (c) data sets. The same window function applies to the time series of Doppler and activity data. Peaks in the window function are periods at which aliases of infinite period signals would be expected. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 2 Signal searches on independent radial velocity data sets.

ac, Likelihood-ratio periodograms searches on the radial velocity (RV) measurements of the UVES (a), HARPS pre-2016 (b) and HARPS PRD (c) subsets. The periodogram with all three sets combined is shown in Fig. 1. The black and red lines represent the searches for the first and second signals, respectively. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 3 Signal searches on the photometry.

ad, Likelihood-ratio periodograms searches for signals in each photometric ASH2 photometric band (a, b) and LCOGT bands (c, d). The two sinusoid fits to the ASH2 S ii series (P1 = 84 d, P2 = 39.1 d) are used later to construct the FF′ model to test for correlations of the photometry with the radial velocity data. The black, red and blue lines represent the search for the first, second and third signal respectively. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 4 Signal searches on the width of the spectral lines.

a, b, Likelihood-ratio periodogram searches on the width of the mean spectral line as measured by m2 for the HARPS pre-2016 (a) and HARPS PRD data (b). The signals in the HARPS pre-2016 data are comparable to the photometric period reported in the literature and the variability in the HARPS PRD run compares quite well to the photometric variability. The black, red and blue lines represent the search for the first, second and third signal, respectively. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 5 Signal searches on the asymmetry of the spectral lines.

a, b, Likelihood-ratio periodogram searches on the line asymmetry as measured by m3 from the HARPS pre-2016 (a) and HARPS PRD (b) data sets. Signal beating at around 1 yr and 0.5 yr is detected in the HARPS pre-2016 data, which is possibly related to instrumental systematic effects or telluric contamination. No signals are detected above the 1% threshold in the HARPS PRD campaign. The black and red lines represent the search for the first and second signals respectively. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 6 Signal searches on the chromospheric S-index.

a, b, Likelihood-ratio periodogram of the S-index from the HARPS pre-2016 (a) and HARPS PRD (b) campaigns. No signals were detected above the 1% threshold. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 7 Signal searches on the spectroscopic Hα index.

ac, Likelihood-ratio periodogram searches of Hα intensity from the UVES (a), HARPS pre-2016 (b) and HARPS PRD (c) campaigns. No signals were detected above the 1% threshold. The green vertical lines mark the period of the planet candidate at 11.2 d.

Extended Data Figure 8 Radial velocities and chromospheric emission during a flare.

ad, Radial velocities (a) and equivalent width measurements of the Hα (b), Na doublet lines (c) and the S-index (d) as a function of time during a flare that occurred the night of 5 May 2013. The time axis is days since jd = 245417.0 d. No trace of the flare is observed in the radial velocities. Error bars in the radial velocities correspond to 1σ errors. The formal 1σ errors in the equivalent width measurements are comparable to the size of the points.

Extended Data Figure 9 Probability distributions for the activity coefficients versus the signal amplitude.

an, Marginalized posterior densities of the activity coefficients versus the semi-amplitude of the signal for UVES (a), HARPS pre-2016 (bf), HARPS PRD campaign (gk) and the photometric FF′ indices for the PRD campaign only (ln). Each panel shows equiprobability contours containing 50%, 95% and 99% of the probability density around the mean estimate, and the corresponding standard deviation of the marginalized distribution (1σ) in red. The blue bar shows the zero value of each activity coefficient. Only CF is found to be substantially different from zero.

Extended Data Table 1 Complete set of model parameters

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Supplementary Data

This zipped file contains the time-series used in the paper. All time-series are given as plain ASCII/CSV files (columns separated by commas) and follow the same format. See the README file within the zip folder for details. (ZIP 62 kb)

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Anglada-Escudé, G., Amado, P., Barnes, J. et al. A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri. Nature 536, 437–440 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19106

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