51 Pegasi B

51 Pegasi b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the solar-type star 51 Pegasi.

51 Pegasi b is the first Jupiter-type planet, with a minimum mass slightly smaller than half of that of Jupiter, discovered around a sunlike star. It was detected by radial-velocity observations obtained with the Elodie spectrometer on the 1.93-m telescope at the Observatoire de Haute Provence in France (Mayor and Queloz 1995). The extraordinarily short period of 4.230785 ± 0.000036 days was completely unexpected for a planet with a mass close to that of Jupiter and led to some initial skepticism that the unseen companion of 51 Pegasi could be a gas giant planet (e.g., Gray 1997). However, the subsequent announcement of several other radial-velocity planet candidates soon convinced most people of the reality of extrasolar planets. This historic discovery and the subsequent emergence of the vibrant field of exoplanetology allowed Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz to receive the Nobel Price of...

Authors and Affiliations

1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA

   David W. Latham

2. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii-Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

   Nader Haghighipour

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David W. Latham .

Editors and Affiliations

1. Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux, Pessac, France

   Muriel Gargaud

2. Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

   William M. Irvine

3. Centro Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain

   Ricardo Amils

4. Analytical, Environmental, Geo-Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium

   Philippe Claeys

5. Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

   Henderson James Cleaves

6. Radio Astronomy, Paris Observatory, Paris, France

   Maryvonne Gerin

7. LESIA, Observatoire de Paris-Site de Meudon, Meudon, France

   Daniel Rouan

8. International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland

   Tilman Spohn

9. Faculté des Sciences et des Techniques de Nantes, Centre François Viète d’Histoire des Sciences et de Techniques EA 1161, Nantes, France

   Stéphane Tirard

10. Innovaxiom, Paris, CX, France

    Michel Viso

Reprints and permissions

© 2023 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Policies and ethics