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The Nacreous Oughts

15 April 2020

orphalese 


(via)

A new study has confirmed the April 2019 discovery of a second planet around Proxima Centauri. (The first, which i call "Hercolubus," orbits in 11 days at about 1/21st of an Astronomical Unit & was discovered--it seems ages ago--in 8/16.) This icy (near [45.5 K] the blackbody temperature of Neptune[51.0] & less than half the mass of Uranus: 5.8 times Earth [238/41]) super-earth orbits once in 1907 days (a prime number), which, given Proxima's mass of 0.118 solar, puts it out around 1.476 AU. (And it even looks like they've been able to image it--or maybe its ring-system...)

We can assume its Albedo is fairly high (0.6-0.7) and its density low (like Pluto & the Galileans--0.6). A terrestrial planet of this mass might have a radius of 1.6 [69/43]; i figure it's more like 2.13 [79/37], with a resulting gravity of 1.28 Earth's. So its graybody temperature is around -239 C (way below the f.p. of methane, -182 C)--though the orbital eccentricity may be as high as 0.41. (In that case, Proxima's apparent size varies from 0.07 to 0.16.) One mystery is why it wasn't able to hold more hydrogen. Did this have something to do with the nearness of the other two stars in the system?

There isn't anything to Titius-Bode, but if there were, the first planet fits it almost perfectly; while this one lands between the places for VII & VIII. In short, it's kind of small for a gas giant, maybe more like a Super-Triton...I call it Orphalese.

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