In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered 51 Pegasi b orbiting a Sun-like star. The giant planet’s very short orbit challenged expectations drawn from our Solar System. It was not the first planet found outside the Solar System: planets around a pulsar had been reported earlier. It earns a place for revealing how different planetary systems can be and for helping establish radial-velocity searches around Sun-like stars.
Source: 51 Pegasi b changes planet hunting.
Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) · CC BY 4.0. Resized and JPEG compressed.
