Credit & Copyright: Josc Rodrigues
Explanation:
It's only 50 light-years to 51 Pegasi.
That star's position is indicated in this snapshot from
August 2025, taken on a night with mostly brighter stars visible above
the dome at Observatoire de Haute-Provence in France.
Thirty years ago,
in October of 1995, astronomers
Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz
announced a profound discovery made at the observatory.
Using a precise spectrograph, they had detected a planet orbiting 51 Peg,
the first known exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star.
Mayor and Queloz had used the spectrograph to measure changes in the
star's radial velocity,
a regular wobble caused by the gravitational
tug of the orbiting planet.
Designated 51 Pegasi b,
the planet was determined to have a mass at least half of Jupiter's mass
and an orbital period of 4.2 days.
That made the exoplanet much closer to its parent star than
Mercury is to the Sun.
Their discovery was quickly confirmed and Mayor and Queloz
were ultimately awarded the
Nobel
Prize in physics
in 2019.
Now recognized as the prototype for the class of exoplanets
fondly known as
hot Jupiters,
51 Pegasi b was formally
named Dimidium,
Latin for half, in 2015.
Since its discovery 30 years ago, over 6,000
exoplanets have been found.
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 |
Yanvar' Fevral' Mart Aprel' Mai Iyun' Iyul' Avgust Sentyabr' Oktyabr' Noyabr' Dekabr' |
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
