Strange Places; January 1996; Scientific American Magazine; by Powell; 2 Page(s)

The universe became a slightly less lonely place last October 6, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory announced the detection of a planet around 51 Pegasi, a nearby star similar to our sun. The landmark discovery bolsters the belief that planetary systems--some of which may include habitable worlds-- are a common result of the way that ordinary stars are born.

Mayor and Queloz inferred the presence of the planet by monitoring the light from 51 Pegasi, which is faintly visible to the naked eye in the constellation Pegasus. The two astronomers noted a slight, repeating shift in the star's spectrum, indicative of a backand- forth motion having a period of 4.2 days. After 18 months of painstaking observations, Mayor and Queloz concluded that the star is being swung about by the gravitational pull of a small, unseen object--a planet. They reported that finding in Florence, Italy, at an otherwise quiet workshop on sunlike stars.