Our quest to find a truly Earth-like planet in deep space
Annelies Mortier, Associate Professor in Astronomy, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham
On October 6 1995, at a scientific meeting in Florence, Italy, two Swiss astronomers made an announcement that would transform our understanding of the universe beyond our solar system. Michel Mayor and his PhD student Didier Queloz, working at the University of Geneva, announced they had detected a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun.
The star in question, 51 Pegasi, lies about 50 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. Its companion – christened 51 Pegasi b – was unlike anything..