Gliese 876 B - Discovery

Discovery

Gliese 876 b was discovered independently by two different teams, one led by Geoffrey Marcy (with data from Keck Observatory and Lick Observatory) and the other by Xavier Delfosse (at Geneva Observatory). Like the majority of known extrasolar planets, it was discovered by detecting variations in its star's radial velocity as a result of the planet's gravity. This was done by making sensitive measurements of the Doppler shift of the spectral lines of Gliese 876. It was the first discovered of four known planets in the Gliese 876 system.

Read more about this topic:  Gliese 876 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)

    The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.
    Max Lerner (b. 1902)