Pale Red Dot campaign launches today

January 15, 2015

Today began the launch of the Pale Red Dot Campaign, an outreach initiative led by an international team of astronomers giving the public the opportunity to follow the search for another Earth. The scientists will be looking for this Earth-like exoplanet in orbit around our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Since Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star, it is believed that any planet near it would appear reddish in hue–a pale red dot that could be similar to our own pale blue one.

The observing campaign will run from January to April 2016 from ESO’s La Silla Observatory, located at the edge of the Chilean Atacama Desert. Data collected there will be complemented with images taken by several robotic telescopes located across the globe. Throughout the campaign, the public will be invited to follow scientists through daily blog posts and social media updates as they collect, analyze, and interpret the data.

“We want to share the excitement of the search with people and show them how science works behind the scenes, the trial and error process, and the continued efforts that are necessary for the discoveries that people normally hear about in the news. By doing so, we hope to encourage more people towards STEM subjects and science in general,” said Guillem Anglada-Escudé, the project coordinator.

However, as scientists know, not all research leads to positive results. There is no guarantee that any exoplanets will be found at all, a concern that has not eluded the Pale Red Dot team.

“We are taking a risk to involve the public before we even know what the observations will be telling us—we cannot analyze the data and draw conclusions in real-time. Once we publish the paper summarizing the findings, it’s entirely possible that we will have to say that we have not been able to find evidence for the presence of an Earth-like exoplanet around Proxima Centauri. But the fact that we can search for such small objects with such extreme precision is simply mind-boggling,” added Guillem Anglada-Escudé.

Project updates will be released every Friday and will contain the highlights of the week. To receive updates, follow the campaign on Twitter @Pale_red_dot and the hashtag #PaleRedDot.