| Exoplanetary Scratchpad |
Centaurus - the Centaur. Planets are named after man-animal hybrids from lore (since a Centaur is a man-horse beast).
Name List[]
- Lycan - Short for Lycanthrope (Werewolf), a man-wolf hybrid.
- Harpy - A woman-bird creature.
- Minotaur - A man-bull creature.
- Anubis - A man-dog god from Egyptian mythology.
- Mermaid - A woman-fish creature.
Systems in Constellation[]
- Alpha Centauri System (apply name "Lycan" for Bb) - Alpha Centauri is also known as Rigil Kentaurus. A is also known as HD 128620 and HR 5459, B is HD 128621 and HR 5460, and C is Proxima Centauri. It is the nearest star system to the Sun. Contains a yellow dwarf star a little bigger than the Sun and an orange star a little smaller orbiting each other orbiting each other about the distance Uranus is from the Sun (varies from Saturn like to Neptune like), as well as a distant Red Dwarf companion Proxima that may or may not be orbiting the other two.
Stellar fingerprinting suggests a high probability that a planet orbits star A, due to dearth of Iron around star. Russian astronomers announced the detection of a second planet orbiting the binary pair at 80 AU with a 100 year period, which appears to be false. The stars in the system will become markedly closer together in 2016, making observations much more difficult and one follow up failed to find it. The system is the first target for the European Cheops exoplanet space telescope.
A planet was thought to have been discovered around star B and detected by HARPS. It would have been an Earth-massed rocky-iron planet with no atmosphere at epistellar distances around the orange dwarf star B. This would have been the least massive planet found around a sunlike star. The planet was informally and controversially named by Uwingu during a fund raising naming contest Albertus Alauda, after a participant's grandfather. Earthlike planets are not detectable in the habitable zone with present radial velocity methods. Technique for detection of planet is a source of doubt for some and it has yet to be independently verified. A team thought they might have detected a transit of this planet, but further observations showed the timing wasn't consistent. It is possible that a second further out (20.4 day period) Earth-sized planet is altering the transit times of the first. A cheap crowdfunded satellite devoted to studying this star could confirm the planets. The star was observed to be a good candidate to host a "super Habitable" planet, which would have 25% more gravity than the Earth, shallow seas, flatter landscape, higher atmospheric pressure, and the 6 BYO star would be stable for life longer.
Proxima, a small flare star, was discovered in 1915 by Robert Ines, who named it. Long suspected planet around Proxima found not to exist. The Pale Red Dot project is dedicated to finding a planet around Proxima using dopplar spectrometry. As Proxima passes in front of two stars (once in 2014, again in 2016), any planets within 5 AU should be detectable via microlensing using the HST. It is known that no planets of Neptune sized mass exist within 1 AU and no Jovians with periods up to 1000 days, or transiting planets exist. An Earth-like planet in the habitable zone was discovered around Proxima Centauri. In 2017, a large stellar flare erupted and bombarded the planet, making it likely that the atmosphere has been completely stripped away by events such as this and not a good candidate for life. It was thought that a lot of dust existed in the system, making it feasable that the star had a rich complement of planets, but this seems to not be the case.