51 Pegasi b
Encyclopedia
51 Pegasi b sometimes though unofficially named Bellerophon, is an extrasolar planet
approximately 50 light-year
s away in the constellation
of Pegasus
. 51 Pegasi b was the first planet to be discovered orbiting a main sequence
star, the Sun-like
51 Pegasi
(the first exoplanets at all were dicovered in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan
around pulsar PSR 1257), and marked a breakthrough in astronomical research. It is the prototype for a class of planets called hot Jupiter
s.
s, the 'b' is used to indicate that this planet was the first discovered orbiting its parent star. Further undiscovered planets of 51 Pegasi would be designated c, d, e, f, and so on. All extrasolar planets have lowercase letters to differentiate from companion stars in the system (which are designated with an uppercase letter).
Though not officially recognized, and not used by astronomers, 51 Pegasi b is sometimes referred to as "Bellerophon." This name comes from the Greek
hero Bellerophon
, who tamed Pegasus
(the Winged Horse). This has direct relations with the constellation in which lies the planet (Pegasus
). This name is usually used as the informal name to show the similarities to the planets of the Solar System
. The same argument and association with the constellation of host star was used to suggest informal names for other extrasolar planets
's discovery was announced on October 6, 1995, by Michel Mayor
and Didier Queloz
in Nature
, using the radial velocity method
at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence with the ELODIE spectrograph
.
On October 12, 1995, less than a week after the announcement of the discovery, confirmation came from Geoffrey Marcy
of San Francisco State University
and Paul Butler
of the University of California, Berkeley
, using the Hamilton Spectrograph at the Lick Observatory
near San Jose
in California
.
The planet was discovered using a sensitive spectroscope that could detect the slight, regular velocity changes in the star's spectral lines of around 70 metres per second. These changes are caused by the planet's gravitational effects from just 7 million kilometres distance from the star.
This was the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. It marked a turning point and forced astronomers to accept that giant planets could exist in short-period orbits. Once astronomers realized that it was worth looking for giant planets with the currently available technology, much more telescope time was devoted to radial velocity planet searches, and hence many more exoplanets in the Sun's neighborhood have been discovered.
is to our Sun, and moves at an orbital speed
of 136 km/s, yet has a minimum mass about half that of Jupiter
(about 150 times that of the Earth). At the time, the presence of a huge world so close to its star was not compatible with theories of planet formation and was considered an anomaly. However, since then, numerous other 'hot Jupiters' have been discovered (see 55 Cancri
and τ Boötis
, for example), and astronomers are revising their theories of planet formation to account for them by studying orbital migration.
Assuming the planet is perfectly grey with no greenhouse or tidal effects, and a Bond albedo of 0.1, the temperature would be 1265K
(around 1000 degrees Celsius / 1800 degrees Fahrenheit). This is between the predicted temperatures of HD 189733 b
and HD 209458 b
(1180–1392K), before they were measured.
It was initially assumed that 51 Pegasi b was a terrestrial planet
, but it is now believed to be a gas giant
. It is sufficiently massive that its thick atmosphere is not blown away by the star's solar wind
.
51 Pegasi b probably has a greater radius
than Jupiter despite its lower mass. This is because its superheated atmosphere must be puffed up into a thick but tenuous layer surrounding it. Beneath this, the gases that make up the planet would be so hot that the planet would glow red. Clouds of silicates may exist in the atmosphere.
The planet is tidally locked
to its star, always presenting the same face to it.
The planet (with Upsilon Andromedae b
) is deemed a candidate for direct imaging by Planetpol
. It is also a candidate for "near-infrared characterisation.... with the VLTI Spectro-Imager".
The earlier, rocky-planet model was utilized as a setting by Hal Clement
in the story Exchange Rate.
Extrasolar planet
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...
approximately 50 light-year
Light-year
A light-year, also light year or lightyear is a unit of length, equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres...
s away in the constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....
of Pegasus
Pegasus (constellation)
Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the winged horse Pegasus in Greek mythology. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations.-Stars:...
. 51 Pegasi b was the first planet to be discovered orbiting a main sequence
Main sequence
The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...
star, the Sun-like
Solar analog
Solar-type, solar analog, and solar twin stars are those stars that are particularly similar to the Sun. The classification is a hierarchy with solar twin being most like the Sun followed by solar analog and then solar-type...
51 Pegasi
51 Pegasi
51 Pegasi is a Sun-like star located 15.6 parsecs from Earth in the constellation Pegasus...
(the first exoplanets at all were dicovered in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan
Aleksander Wolszczan
Aleksander Wolszczan is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first extrasolar planets and pulsar planets.- Scientific career :...
around pulsar PSR 1257), and marked a breakthrough in astronomical research. It is the prototype for a class of planets called hot Jupiter
Hot Jupiter
Hot Jupiters are a class of extrasolar planet whose mass is close to or exceeds that of Jupiter...
s.
Name
The name 51 Pegasi b is the official astronomical name of the planet. As with all extrasolar planetExtrasolar planet
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...
s, the 'b' is used to indicate that this planet was the first discovered orbiting its parent star. Further undiscovered planets of 51 Pegasi would be designated c, d, e, f, and so on. All extrasolar planets have lowercase letters to differentiate from companion stars in the system (which are designated with an uppercase letter).
Though not officially recognized, and not used by astronomers, 51 Pegasi b is sometimes referred to as "Bellerophon." This name comes from the Greek
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
hero Bellerophon
Bellerophon
Bellerophon or Bellerophontes is a hero of Greek mythology. He was "the greatest hero and slayer of monsters, alongside of Cadmus and Perseus, before the days of Heracles", and his greatest feat was killing the Chimera, a monster that Homer depicted with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a...
, who tamed Pegasus
Pegasus
Pegasus is one of the best known fantastical as well as mythological creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine horse, usually white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and foaled by the Gorgon Medusa. He was the brother of Chrysaor, born at a single birthing...
(the Winged Horse). This has direct relations with the constellation in which lies the planet (Pegasus
Pegasus (constellation)
Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the winged horse Pegasus in Greek mythology. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations.-Stars:...
). This name is usually used as the informal name to show the similarities to the planets of the Solar System
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
. The same argument and association with the constellation of host star was used to suggest informal names for other extrasolar planets
Discovery
The exoplanetExtrasolar planet
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...
's discovery was announced on October 6, 1995, by Michel Mayor
Michel Mayor
Dr. Michel G. E. Mayor is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva...
and Didier Queloz
Didier Queloz
Didier Queloz is a Geneva-based astronomer with a prolific record in finding extrasolar planets. He is understudy to Michel Mayor.Didier Queloz was a Ph.D...
in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, using the radial velocity method
Doppler effect
The Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from...
at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence with the ELODIE spectrograph
ELODIE spectrograph
ELODIE was an echelle type spectrograph installed at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence 1.93m reflector in south-eastern France for the . Its optical instrumentation was developed by André Baranne from the Marseille Observatory. The purpose of this instrument was extrasolar planet detection by the...
.
On October 12, 1995, less than a week after the announcement of the discovery, confirmation came from Geoffrey Marcy
Geoffrey Marcy
Geoffrey W. Marcy is an American astronomer, who is currently Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, famous for discovering more extrasolar planets than anyone else, 70 out of the first 100 to be discovered, along with R...
of San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
and Paul Butler
R. Paul Butler
R. Paul Butler is an astronomer who searches for extrasolar planets.He received a BA and an MS from San Francisco State University, completing a Master's thesis with Geoffrey Marcy, and then completed his doctoral studies at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993...
of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, using the Hamilton Spectrograph at the Lick Observatory
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA...
near San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
The planet was discovered using a sensitive spectroscope that could detect the slight, regular velocity changes in the star's spectral lines of around 70 metres per second. These changes are caused by the planet's gravitational effects from just 7 million kilometres distance from the star.
This was the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. It marked a turning point and forced astronomers to accept that giant planets could exist in short-period orbits. Once astronomers realized that it was worth looking for giant planets with the currently available technology, much more telescope time was devoted to radial velocity planet searches, and hence many more exoplanets in the Sun's neighborhood have been discovered.
Physical characteristics
After its discovery, many teams confirmed the planet's existence and obtained more observations of its properties. It was discovered that the planet orbits the star in around 4 Earth days, and is much closer to it than MercuryMercury (planet)
Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
is to our Sun, and moves at an orbital speed
Orbital speed
The orbital speed of a body, generally a planet, a natural satellite, an artificial satellite, or a multiple star, is the speed at which it orbits around the barycenter of a system, usually around a more massive body...
of 136 km/s, yet has a minimum mass about half that of Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
(about 150 times that of the Earth). At the time, the presence of a huge world so close to its star was not compatible with theories of planet formation and was considered an anomaly. However, since then, numerous other 'hot Jupiters' have been discovered (see 55 Cancri
55 Cancri
55 Cancri , also cataloged Rho1 Cancri or abbreviated 55 Cnc, is a binary star approximately 41 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cancer...
and τ Boötis
Tau Boötis
Tau Boötis is a yellow-white dwarf approximately 51 light-years away in the constellation of Boötes. The system is also a binary star system, with the secondary star being a red dwarf...
, for example), and astronomers are revising their theories of planet formation to account for them by studying orbital migration.
Kelvin
The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...
(around 1000 degrees Celsius / 1800 degrees Fahrenheit). This is between the predicted temperatures of HD 189733 b
HD 189733 b
HD 189733 b is an extrasolar planet approximately 63 light-years away in the constellation of Vulpecula . The planet was discovered orbiting the star HD 189733 on October 5, 2005, when astronomers in France observed the planet transiting across the face of the star. The planet is classified as a...
and HD 209458 b
HD 209458 b
HD 209458 b is an extrasolar planet that orbits the Solar analog star HD 209458 in the constellation Pegasus, some 150 light-years from Earth's solar system, with evidence of water vapor....
(1180–1392K), before they were measured.
It was initially assumed that 51 Pegasi b was a terrestrial planet
Terrestrial planet
A terrestrial planet, telluric planet or rocky planet is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or metals. Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets are the inner planets closest to the Sun...
, but it is now believed to be a gas giant
Gas giant
A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. There are four gas giants in the Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune...
. It is sufficiently massive that its thick atmosphere is not blown away by the star's solar wind
Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed over time...
.
51 Pegasi b probably has a greater radius
Radius
In classical geometry, a radius of a circle or sphere is any line segment from its center to its perimeter. By extension, the radius of a circle or sphere is the length of any such segment, which is half the diameter. If the object does not have an obvious center, the term may refer to its...
than Jupiter despite its lower mass. This is because its superheated atmosphere must be puffed up into a thick but tenuous layer surrounding it. Beneath this, the gases that make up the planet would be so hot that the planet would glow red. Clouds of silicates may exist in the atmosphere.
The planet is tidally locked
Tidal locking
Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, the same side of the Earth's Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner...
to its star, always presenting the same face to it.
The planet (with Upsilon Andromedae b
Upsilon Andromedae b
Upsilon Andromedae b, occasionally referred to as Upsilon Andromedae Ab , is an extrasolar planet approximately 44 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Andromeda . The planet was discovered orbiting the Solar twin star, Upsilon Andromedae, approximately every five days...
) is deemed a candidate for direct imaging by Planetpol
PlanetPol
PlanetPol is a ground based extrasolar planet search device. Based at William Herschel Telescope....
. It is also a candidate for "near-infrared characterisation.... with the VLTI Spectro-Imager".
The earlier, rocky-planet model was utilized as a setting by Hal Clement
Hal Clement
Harry Clement Stubbs better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre.-Biography:...
in the story Exchange Rate.