Michel Mayor

and the pattern shattered.

The first confirmed exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star was discovered in 1995, 51 Pegasi b, detected by Michel Mayor and Didier Kellos using radial velocity measurements at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence.

The discovery shocked the astronomical community for a reason that seems almost quaint now.

51 Pegasi b was a gas giant roughly half the mass of Jupiter, but it orbited its star in just 4.2 days.

Then, in 1995, everything changed.

Michel Meyer and Didier Queloz, two Swiss astronomers working at the Haute-Provence Observatory in southeastern France, announced the first confirmed detection of a planet orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system.

The star was called 51 Pegasi, an unremarkable yellow dwarf roughly 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

The planet, 51 Pegasi b, was nothing like what anyone expected.