Papers › The Pale Green Dot: A Method to Characterize Proxima Centauri b using Exo-Aurorae
The Pale Green Dot: A Method to Characterize Proxima Centauri b using Exo-Aurorae
Rodrigo Luger, Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, David P. Fleming, Matt A. Tilley, Eric Agol, Victoria S. Meadows, Russell Deitrick, Rory Barnes
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
We examine the feasibility of detecting auroral emission from the potentially habitable exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. Detection of aurorae would yield an independent confirmation of the planet's existence, constrain the presence and composition of its atmosphere, and determine the planet's eccentricity and inclination, thereby breaking the mass-inclination degeneracy. If Proxima Centauri b is a terrestrial world with an Earth-like atmosphere and magnetic field, we estimate the power at the 5577\AA\ OI auroral line is on the order of 0.1 TW under steady-state stellar wind, or ∼ 100 × stronger than that on Earth. This corresponds to a planet-star contrast ratio of 10⁻⁶-10⁻⁷ in a narrow band about the 5577\AA\ line, although higher contrast (10⁻⁴-10⁻⁵) may be possible during periods of strong magnetospheric disturbance (auroral power 1-10 TW). We searched the Proxima Centauri b HARPS data for the 5577\AA\ line and for other prominent oxygen and nitrogen lines, but find no signal, indicating that the OI auroral line contrast must be lower than 2×10⁻² (with power ≲ 3,000 TW), consistent with our predictions. We find that observations of 0.1 TW auroral emission lines are likely infeasible with current and planned telescopes. However, future observations with a space-based coronagraphic telescope or a ground-based extremely large telescope (ELT) with a coronagraph could push sensitivity down to terawatt oxygen aurorae (contrast 7×10⁻⁶) with exposure times of ∼ 1 day. If a coronagraph design contrast of 10⁻⁷ can be achieved with negligible instrumental noise, a future concept ELT could observe steady-state auroral emission in a few nights.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections