EUROPE: Geoff Marcy remembers the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Paul Butler remembers being dead tired. The two men had just made history: the first confirmation of a planet orbiting another star.The groundbreaking discovery had been announced less than week earlier by the European team of Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. But the news was met with some initial skepticism in the astronomical community. By a stroke of good luck, Marcy and Butler happened to have previously scheduled observation time on a 120-inch telescope at the Lick Observatory, atop California’s Mount Hamilton.
The scientists, who would become two of the world’s most famous planet hunters, remember driving down the mountainside together in October 1995. They’d spent four straight nights making their observations. And while further processing would be needed to make the scientific case, their data seemed clear and unmistakable—and almost impossible. A huge planet, at least half the size of Jupiter, was not only orbiting its host star more tightly than Mercury hugs the sun. It was racing around that star, making a complete orbit in just four days.
The planet, called 51 Pegasi b, would open a new era in humanity’s exploration of our galactic neighborhood. It would be the first in a series of “hot Jupiters”—giant planets in fast, tight orbits—discovered in rapid succession. The rush of new worlds would propel Marcy, Butler and their research team into the media spotlight, and forever change our view of the cosmos.
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