The telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will be aimed at Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system at just 4.2 light-years from the Sun, to try to identify a planet with characteristics similar to ours.
Reaching it one day in a form other than a photon will be difficult, but in the meantime, ESO has decided it’s worth closely observing this Red Dwarf to see if any potentially habitable celestial bodies orbit around it.
This is how the “Little Red Dot” campaign was born, which will see numerous telescopes around the world active from January 15 to the first week of April 2016 in observing Proxima Centauri.
The challenge is exciting while the outcome is far from certain. It’s not at all guaranteed that the “Little Red Dot” will be identified, but this uncertainty is not so much a problem as an opportunity. The public, in fact, will be able to monitor the mission like never before.
For the first time, anyone, anywhere, can participate via the internet in all phases of observation and won’t have to wait months or years to read scientific publications on specialized sites or magazines. Publications that, on the other hand, often never come due to the scarcity of results or the complexity of the data to be processed.
In the case of the “Little Red Dot” campaign, the perspective is reversed: it’s not so much, and certainly not only, the results that are important, but the journey that will be taken to try to achieve them.
You can find all the details and references of the mission on the ESO website:
https://www.eso.org/public/italy/announcements/ann16002/?nolang#.Vpj0sVX_nC8.facebook
and on the official campaign website: