Michel Mayor develops precise stellar radial velocity measurements and their use in searches for unseen companions. With Didier Queloz, he reported a planetary companion to 51 Pegasi in 1995.
The host star's regularly changing Doppler shift revealed its reflex motion around a shared center of mass. The approximately four-day orbital period showed that a giant planet could exist much closer to its host star than the giant planets of the Solar system. The discovery made this previously unexpected orbital arrangement an observational constraint on planet formation.[ref]
A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. pp. 355–359: ELODIE measurements and short-period planetary companion
Portrait of Michel Mayor
. Thor Nielsen / NTNU; source distributed by ESA. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. Articles by others on the same topic
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Michel Mayor is a Swiss astrophysicist renowned for his significant contributions to the field of astronomy, particularly in the study of exoplanets. He gained international fame for his role in the discovery of the first confirmed exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b, in 1995, alongside his colleague Didier Queloz. This groundbreaking discovery opened a new field of study in astronomy and has had a profound impact on our understanding of planetary systems beyond our own.