Proxima Centauri b Proxima Centauri b Proxima Centauri b (also called Proxima b or Alpha Centauri Cb) is an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of a triple star system. It is located about 4.2 light-years (1.3 parsecs, 40 trillion km, or 25 trillion miles) from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, making it the closest known exoplanet to the Solar System. Proxima Centauri b orbits the star at a distance of roughly with an orbital period of approximately 11.2 Earth days, and has an estimated
Mercer 3 Mercer 3 Mercer 3 is a heavily obscured globular cluster embedded in the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. It was discovered in 2008 in the data obtained by 2MASS and GLIMPSE infrared surveys. The cluster is located in the Scutum constellation. It had avoided detection for such a long time due to the extremely strong foreground extinction in its direction reaching 24 magnitudes in the visible light. Mercer 3 is probably situated at the distance from 4 to 8 kpc from the Sun and has a half-light radius of 0.7–1.5 pc. Mercer 3 is an old globular cluster having