Talk:Proxima Centauri

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Proxima Centauri is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 5, 2010.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 11, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
August 2, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed
August 12, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

no mention of "Proxima Centauri a"

though there is "Proxima Centauri b" and "Proxima Centauri c" no mention of "Proxima Centauri a"... nor explanation for why "a" was skipped — Preceding unsigned comment added by Howard from NYC (talk • contribs) 01:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Stellar systems are sub-designated with lower-case letters in order of discovery. The primary is always "a". Tarl N. (discuss) 02:00, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but why is there no "a" mentioned in the article? Atrusoghen (talk) 14:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Atrusoghen:The primary is the star itself. Tarl N. (discuss) 17:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

the a is Proxima Centauri star itself Proximaprotogen (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding earth nearest star

The answer should be Sun...Sun is the nearest star with a distance of 93,000,000 miles from earth. while proxima century lies at a distance of around 25,300,000,000,000 miles from the earth. Nikhilnishant28 (talk) 06:30, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The lede states that Proxima Centauri "is the nearest-known star to the Sun". Praemonitus (talk) 13:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Co-moving star systems

I removed the following paragraph from the "Distance and motion" section because there is nothing in the source to support it:

"Six single stars, two binary star systems, and a triple star^[specify] share a common motion through space with Proxima Centauri and the Alpha Centauri system. The space velocities of these stars are all within 10 km/s of Alpha Centauri's peculiar motion. Thus, they may form a moving group of stars, which would indicate a common point of origin,^[1] such as in a star cluster."

Praemonitus (talk) 04:15, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Johnston, Kathryn V.; Hernquist, Lars; Bolte, Michael (1996). "Fossil signatures of ancient accretion events in the halo". The Astrophysical Journal. 465: 278. arXiv:astro-ph/9602060. Bibcode:1996ApJ...465..278J. doi:10.1086/177418. S2CID 16091481.

Praemonitus Amazing and led me on a chase. I suspected essentially vandalism but it was much more complicated. Here's the insertion. - but the *citation* is different in the url which is still there and is totally legit and I found when the citation was changed at this bot edit so the problem was the bot!! Smkolins (talk) 18:42, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your investigation. I restored the paragraph in the article using the original cite, but changed the URL to a bibcode. Hopefully that will protect it from future bot changes. Praemonitus (talk) 00:38, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, what? The Anosova (1994) article? That article makes the claim that Proxima is almost certainly in a hyperbolic orbit around Alpha AB, which I understand was refuted several years ago (yeah, Kervella 2017^[1]), producing an eccentricity of 0.5(+0.08 -0.09). Do we still accept the 1994 conclusion? Tarl N. (discuss) 01:25, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Kervella, P.; Thévenin, F.; Lovis, C. (2017). "Proxima's orbit around α Centauri". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 598: L7. arXiv:1611.03495. Bibcode:2017A&A...598L...7K. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201629930. ISSN 0004-6361. S2CID 50867264. Separation: 3.1, left column of page 3; Orbital period and epoch of periastron: Table 3, right column of page 3.

The group they propose includes the Alpha Centauri system, so the nature of Proxima Centauri's orbit does not necessarily negate the proposed co-moving hypothesis. That being said, I couldn't find any follow-up studies based on more accurate astrometric data so it probably is not widely accepted. Praemonitus (talk) 14:27, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Correction: I do see it mentioned in Schultz et al. (1998),[1] Wertheimer and Laughlin (2006),[2] and Barnes et al. (2016).[3] Hence it's probably not something we can readily dismiss. Praemonitus (talk) 05:04, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Request

This page should be moved and redirected to Alpha Centauri

Why? There's enough content for a stand-alone article. Cf. WP:RELAR. Praemonitus (talk) 14:40, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Faulty info graphic "Schematic of the three planets"?

The "Schematic of the three planets" seems to be wrong, as the planet "Proxima Centauri d" is marked as uncertain ("?"), whereas according to the text and exoplanet.eu it is the outermost planet Proxima Centauri c which is disputed. CalRis (talk). — Preceding undated comment added 12:37, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's because our understanding of the system has changed since the image was made. It could be updated, although I can't find the label for planet d in the SVG source code. SevenSpheres (talk) 16:37, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the schematics. Now it shows Proxima Centauri c as disputed. Travarx (talk) 17:30, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Johnston, Kathryn V.; Hernquist, Lars; Bolte, Michael (1996). "Fossil signatures of ancient accretion events in the halo". The Astrophysical Journal. 465: 278. arXiv:astro-ph/9602060. Bibcode:1996ApJ...465..278J. doi:10.1086/177418. S2CID 16091481.

[KervellaThévenin2017-2] Kervella, P.; Thévenin, F.; Lovis, C. (2017). "Proxima's orbit around α Centauri". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 598: L7. arXiv:1611.03495. Bibcode:2017A&A...598L...7K. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201629930. ISSN 0004-6361. S2CID 50867264. Separation: 3.1, left column of page 3; Orbital period and epoch of periastron: Table 3, right column of page 3.

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