Bringing the Doppler Shift to the Mainstream
The wiggling of the stars longed for quite a while until astronomers found the perfect technology to gauge the measurement. It was a spectrometer that astronomers relied on for its size. It is a device that broke up the light from a distance into a multitude of elements. With the help of the spectrometer, Mayor and Queloz were able to get a close view of the planets and detect the presence of hydrogen and carbon. They used to monitor the star day and night and observe the change in the spectrum. The changes in the movement that were seen from the Earth were called the Doppler shift.
Doppler shift was not a new technique that astronomers were using; it was discovered almost two hundred years ago. It was Mayor and Queloz that took the method to another level by tweaking it to some extent.
They were determined to prove the existence of an exoplanet in the universe. When a planet orbits a star, the gravitational pull of the planet will pull the star just like a leash on a dog. Though there won’t be some significant movement as the star overweighs the world, there will be a slight change. In 1995, the Nobel award winner duo proved the detectable movement or wobble in star 51 Pegasi’s spectrum. They confirmed that such wobble could only be caused by a small or unseen companion, probably an exoplanet.