Discovery
Like the majority of known extrasolar planets, 55 Cancri b was discovered by detecting variations in its star's radial velocity caused by the planet's gravity. By making sensitive measurements of the Doppler shift of the spectrum of 55 Cancri A, a 15-day periodicity was detected. The planet was announced in 1996, together with the planet of Tau Boötis and the innermost planet of Upsilon Andromedae.
Even when this inner planet, with a mass at least 78% times that of Jupiter was accounted for, the star still showed a drift in its radial velocity. This eventually led to the discovery of the outer planet 55 Cancri d in 2002.
Read more about this topic: 55 Cancri B
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)