The area of exoplanet studies has grown suddenly in the past twenty years. So far, over 5,900 planets have been confirmed in more than 4,400 planetary systems. Astronomers have even confirmed the presence of a multi-planet system around Proxima Centauri, the closest star outside the solar system. And yet astronomers have not confirmed the presence of exoplanets around Alpha Centauri, the binary system about 4.344 light years from the earth (which forms a trinary with proxima centauri).
Nevertheless, the efforts to determine whether Alpha Centauri has a planet, especially with regard to the primary of the system, must be the sun -like star Alpha Centauri a (Alpha Cen a). Thanks to the highly developed infrared imaging of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers may be able to finally recognize them. In a recently published work, an international team of researchers announced the preliminary knowledge of their observation campaign. After her analysis, Alpha Cen A can have a Jupiter size and a light dust slices with light zodiacal.
Research was led by Aniket Sanghi, doctoral student and NSF graduate in the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). He was JOINED Researchers from the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (Nexsci), The French-Chilean Laboratory for Astronomy, the Laboratory for Instrumentation and Research in Astrophysics (Lira), The Steward Obervatory, The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), The Max-Planck-Intitute for Astronomy (MPIA), The Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI), NASA's AMES Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA.
The study by Exoplaneten has benefited from many progress in astronomy. This includes adaptive optics (AO), coronographies, spectrometers and algorithms for machine learning. Nevertheless, observing exoplanets in binary star systems remains notoriously difficult, even with the next generation telescopes like the JWST. Despite his advanced look and extreme sensitivity to infrared radiation, direct imaging studies by Alpha Centauri (despite his proximity) Sanghi and his colleagues made a great challenge. How he explained the universe by e -mail today:
“The challenge arises because alpha cen a is in a narrow binary system with the accompanying star Alpha Cen B.. The presence of a second star can disturb both the education and the development of planets in the system through gravitational interactions. Stable planets would have cooled down significantly after the loss of their initial heat.
In addition, alpha cen a and b are too bright for direct imaging, even with coronographers that can block the light of the primary. This meant that Sanghi and his team had to rely on a blind offset, a technique in which a nearby Heller reference star is used with prepared offsets to observe an object. In this case, the reference star was Epsilon Muscae, a red giant star that lies about 330 light years from the earth in the Sternbecher Musca, which is 1.700 times the luminosity of the sun.
In addition, the gravitational interaction between A and B Complicated radial speed measurements, which determine the presence of one or more planets based on the influence of gravity on their parent star. “One of the main difficulties is based on the fact that Alpha Cen a is part of a binary system,” said Sanghi. “Even if we can block the overwhelming view of Alpha Cen A, his accompanying star Alpha Cen B, the detector with light.
In August 2024, February 2025 and April 2025, webb conducted observations of α cen a using his mid-infrared instrument (Miri). The observations in February 2025 were the subject of the preliminary result study, in which a single α -cen -a -roll was successful. The use of Epsilon Mus as a reference star also enabled the subtraction of α cen a and α cen B. their results made an upper limit for the existence of a planet surrounding by Jupiter size, the α cen a at a distance of 1.5 to 2 au – one and a half to twice as far as possible between sun and earth.
As Sanghi explained, this is only the beginning of Webb's observation campaign:
“Our early knowledge is a look at how powerful you are-we now know that it is able to recognize Jupiter size around alpha cen a in areas of the image in which the star contamination is low, and where the coronagraph goes through the most light from a potential planet. above!”
Their observations also made up an zodiac, a thick hesitant cloud of dust particles that were generated by asteroid collisions and cometary activity. In the solar system, this interplanetary dust is distributed along the sunlup of the sun (the level where the planets circle). This dust is responsible for the so -called “Zodiacal Light”, a diffuse glow that can be seen before sunrise or after sunset along the sunlupes. According to your observations, this hard drive is about five times as bright as the zodiac disc of the solar system.
“In this research note there is only a first look at Alpha Centauri a,” said Sanghi. “In the upcoming work, we will share results from all three visits and the sophisticated analysis techniques that we use to tackle this complex data record. These JWST observations offer the tempting opportunity to search for planets and dust in the next star system – for our own – there are much more.”
This study, which recently appeceared in the research notes of the American astronomical Society (RNAAS), is part of a Series of Papers that provides a complete analysis of all jwst/miri observations of alpha Centauri a. The Research is part of sanghi's Exoplanet Technology Laboratory (ETLAB), where co-author Dimitri Mawet (The David Morrisroe Professor of Astronomy and a Senior Research Scientist at NASA JPL) is his consultant.
Further reading: Rnaas
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