Nearby Exoplanets Options

[JRehling]

There have been a few topics in recent years pertaining to exoplanets found circling nearby red dwarfs, particularly Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1. There's a new one to report, and I thought I'd give the topic a more general scope rather than specific to this one.

The star in question is Ross 128, and the planet's solar flux is between that of Earth and Venus. There's a good chance that this is potentially the most "habitable" exoplanet yet found, and is happily quite close (13th closest system), so that telescopes will be able to separate the light of the planet from that of the star. This is a circumstance that only a few nearby stars will permit in the foreseeable future, so Ross 128 is likely to figure large in our exoplanet studies over the next century.

https://www.eso.org/public/archives/release...36/eso1736a.pdf

[Gladstoner]

Interesting.

Plus, for each Sol system planet, a band can be projected onto our celestial sphere which would contain all stars from which a transit could theoretically be observed. In the case of the earth, it would be 1/2 degree wide along the ecliptic.