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Published online 14 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.576
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Solar System match made in the heavens
Extrasolar planetary system discovered with mini Jupiter and Saturn.
Two years ago, excited by a strange 'burp' in the light streaming from a star 5,000 light years away, Scott Gaudi started scribbling calculations. He went to bed thinking that he had discovered another extrasolar planet, similar in size to Jupiter.
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As the article states, most planets have bben found by the reflex method. But I'm puzzled by this method. The idea is that if there is a planet orbiting the star its gravity will tug on the star moving it towards you and away from you and that this will show up in the star's radial velocity. But at the resolutions being used for this, you also, surely, need to take account of the telescope's motions. As we move towards and away from the star while we orbit our sun this will contribute to the perceived velocity of the star by up to 30 km per s. As the Earth rotates the telescope will move towards and away from the star (max contibution of nearly half a km per s). The Earth's orbit about the earth-moon barycenter will also contribute (up to 1 km per s). Surely these contributions ahve to be subtracted out? Yet when I look at some of the papers (say, Mayor and Queloz on 51 Peg) I don't see any explicit mention of this. Is it in there implicitly somewhere?