Alpha Centauri is a three-star system that lies about 4.37 light-years from the sun. Two of the three stars are sunlike neighbors that together form a binary system called Alpha Centauri AB.

Known as the Toliman mission, the project led by the University of Sydney will launch in 2023 and scan Alpha Centauri AB for worlds in the habitable zone, where liquid water can flow on the surface.

Proxima Centauri is a low-mass red dwarf star, known as an M-class dwarf, that happens to be close to the bright binary star Alpha Centauri AB, which outshines its cool stepbrother, so to speak.

Rather, two of the stars in the system, called Alpha Centauri “A” and Alpha Centauri “B” (known together as AB), are actually emitting X-ray radiation on par with what we get from our own sun.

The AB pair are both remarkably similar to our Sun, with Alpha Cen A almost identical in size, brightness, and age, and Alpha Cen B only slightly smaller and dimmer.

While Alpha Centauri AB is the third brightest nighttime star after Sirius and Canopus, Proxima shines meekly at magnitude 11.1 and requires a small telescope to see.

Were Pandora real, that would technically make it Alpha Centauri Ab or Ac or whatever depending on what else was round the same star and the order they were detected in. But Pandora sounds much ...

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to the Solar System. Image released Oct. 17, 2012. ... Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University.

“The similarities between GJ65AB and Alpha Centauri AB, together with the newly detected stable super Neptune in the GJ65 system, suggest the stability of the corresponding potential super ...

This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The double star Alpha Centauri AB appears in the image between the exoplanet and its ...

The hunt for nearby exoplanets has just heated up considerably. A new instrument designed to find potentially habitable alien worlds in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own sun ...