Michel Mayor. Portrait of the astrophysicist professor Michel Mayor seen on an artwork of planet 51 Pegasi B orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. Mayor is pro

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Michel Mayor. Portrait of the astrophysicist professor Michel Mayor seen on an artwork of planet 51 Pegasi B orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. Mayor is professor of astrophysics at Geneva University. In 1995, along with Didier Queloz, he discovered 51 Pegasi B. This planet orbits I51 Pegasi, a Sun-like star some 42 light years from Earth. 51 Pegasi B is about half Jupiter's size, and orbits only 7 million kilometres from the star, equivalent to 1/6th of Mercury's orbit around the Sun. It is likely that this extremely hot planet is pulled into an oval shape by huge gravitational tidal forces. Photographed in 1997. Mayor was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019, along with Queloz and cosmologist James Peebles, for the discovery of 51 Pegasi B.

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Size: 2392px × 2638px
Photo credit: © CARLOS MUNOZ-YAGUE/EURELIOS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 51, astrophysicist, discovere, discoverer, extrasolar, laureate, mayor, michel, nobel, pegasi, planet, portraits, prize, surname