The Space Weather of Proxima Centauri b

Understand

A planet orbiting in the "habitable zone" of our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, has recently been discovered, and the next natural question is whether or not Proxima b is "habitable".

• Stellar winds are likely a source of atmospheric erosion that could be particularly severe in the case of M dwarf habitable zone planets that reside close to their parent star.
• Here we study the stellar wind conditions that Proxima b experiences over its orbit.
• We construct 3-D MHD models of the wind and magnetic field around Proxima Centauri using a surface magnetic field map for a star of the same spectral type and scaled to match the observed ~ 600 G surface magnetic field strength of Proxima.