![]() Plus, it’s what’s known today as a hot Jupiter.īy the way, detailed pictures you see of exoplanets, such as the one at the top of this post, are always artists’ concepts. So, the planet is always presenting the same face to Pegasi 51. It’s also known that this planet is tidally locked to its star, much as our moon is tidally locked to Earth. In other words, 51 Pegasi b orbits very close to its star. It takes Jupiter 12 years to complete one orbit. As you know, the Earth orbits the sun in 365 days. 51 Pegasi b orbits very close to its parent star, requiring only four days to orbit its star. It’s thought to have a larger diameter than Jupiter (the biggest planet in our solar system), despite its smaller mass. What do we know today of 51 Pegasi b, a world whose place in astronomical history is so secure? Its mass is about half that of Jupiter. As of September 2022, astronomers have confirmed more than 5,100 exoplanets.īut 51 Pegasi b will always be the first known exoplanet to orbit a star like our sun. While 51 Pegasi b was the first, we now know there are thousands of exoplanets. 51 Pegasi b was the first of thousands of exoplanets Which is Latin for half, referring to its mass of at least half the mass of Jupiter.Īlso, astronomers consider 51 Pegasi b the prototype for the class of planets astronomers call hot Jupiters. Later, in the course of its NameExoWorlds contest, the International Astronomical Union named this planet Dimidium. In fact, Bellerophon was a figure from Greek mythology who rode the winged horse Pegasus. Marcy helped confirm its existence and was following the convention of naming planets after Greek and Roman mythological figures. The astronomer Geoffrey Marcy dubbed it Bellerophon. Other names for the planet 51 Pegasi bĪstronomers call 51 Pegasi b by other names. So far, this planet is the only one known in this system. If additional planets are ever found for the star 51 Pegasi, they’ll be designated c, d, e, f, and so on. The b means that this planet was the first discovered orbiting its parent star. Astronomers officially designated the new planet as 51 Pegasi b, in accordance with nomenclature already decided upon for extrasolar planets. The star was 51 Pegasi, located about 50 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus the Flying Horse. They later published their finding in the journal Nature, in a paper titled simply A Jupiter-Mass Companion to a Solar-type Star. ![]() October 6, 1995: On this date, astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced the discovery of the first planet in orbit around a distant sunlike star. 51 Pegasi b: 1st planet found orbiting a sunlike star Here is a comparison showing an artists’ conception of 51 Pegasi b to Jupiter and 51 Pegasi to the sun. Astronomers discovered the 1st planet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995.
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