Proxima b - Distance to Earth

This is the distance from Earth to Proxima b.

Proxima b

By measuring the difference in light emitted and motion (wobble) of stars, astronomers are able to detect more and more planets outside of our solar system. Scientists have recently detected a planet orbiting the star closes to the Earth.  The start is Alpha Centauri (Proxima a), a Red Dwarf star.  This planet is interesting for two reasons.  

1. It's close enough that people could actually live long enough to get to it if we make some breakthroughs in space flight.
2. It's in the Life Zone around its star, not too close nor too far to get the life giving light and warmth from its star.

So what is relatively close?  The scientists list it at 4.1 light-years in distance.  Now light-years are pretty big.  Quite literally, a light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, and light travels at 186,000 miles per second.  So after a year, that's pretty far.

If you click on this calculator button ( Astro-distances), you can scroll down from the Sun to Alpha Centauri and convert 4.1 light-years into miles, kilometers or even inches.  You'll see it's pretty big.  Also, you can click ASTRO TRAVEL TIME to see how long it would take you to get to Wolf 1061 at different speeds that we're familiar with.

For more info, see CNN Article: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/world/wolf-1061-exoplanet-alien-life/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obnetwork.

See Also

• Exoplanet Calculator:  Useful tools with unit conversions related to Exoplanets
• Astro Distances:  This calculator shows the distance from Earth to other celestial objects
• Astro Travel Time: This calculator computes the time to travel to different celestial bodies at various speeds.