Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, is a small main-sequence red dwarf of spectral class M6-Ve. It has an absolute magnitude of +15.60, over 20,000 times fainter than the Sun. Its mass is calculated to be 0.1221 M _☉. It is the closest star to the Sun but is too faint to be visible to the naked eye. Proxima Centauri is a member of the Alpha Centauri star system, being identified as component Alpha Centauri C, and is 2.18° to the southwest of the Alpha Centauri AB pair. It is currently 12,950 AU (0.2 ly) from AB, which it orbits with a period of about 550,000 years. It is the closest stellar system from the Sun (4.24 light years). This ensemble of 3 stars includes two Sun-like stars - Alpha Centauri A and B - and a red dwarf called either Alpha Centauri C or Proxima Centauri. The name Proxima comes from the fact that it is currently the closest of the 3 Alpha Centauri stars. New Horizons was traveling at speeds that topped 52,000 mph, but even at that rate, it would take about 54,400 years to reach Proxima Centauri. There are indeed faster probes out there. The sixty-four-meter radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia was used to detect the potential signals from Proxima Centauri. He told the New York Times that the signal appears to only shop up in their data when they are looking in the direction of Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is known to host one planet for sure the roughly Earth-size Proxima b, which completes one orbit every 11 Earth days. That puts Proxima b in the star's “habitable zone,” the just-right range of orbital distances where liquid water could exist on a world's surface. Alpha Centauri B is an orange K1-type star slightly smaller than the sun. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf about one-eighth the size of the sun, according to NASA. Proxima Centauri b is very similar in size to Earth, with a mass of 1.17 Earth masses. It orbits its star in only 11.2 days, in contrast to our Earth's year-long orbit around our sun. It receives an amount of energy from its central star that is about 2/3 of that received by the Earth from the Sun. The key element to habitability is whether liquid water could exist on the planetary surface.

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