Planet - 51 Pegasi b

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51 Pegasi and its planet
Credit: NASA

51 Pegasi b was the first exoplanet ever detected orbiting a main-sequence star. Its discovery in 1995 by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory launched a tidal wave of exoplanet discoveries that continues to this day. 51 Pegasi b orbits a star 50 lightyears from Earth, and like most of the exoplanets found in the early years it is a "hot Jupiter" – a gas giant orbiting very close to its home star. Its minimum mass is about half that of Jupiter, and it completes each orbit in a mere 4 days. As a result its surface is extremely hot, estimated at around 1000 degrees Celsius (1800 degrees Fahrenheit).

Despite close observations over a decade and a half, astronomers have found no sign of any additional planets orbiting 51 Pegasi. This suggests that hot Jupiters can effectively clean out a planetary system as they migrate from the distant regions in which they were formed to their final orbits close to their home star.

Links:-

http://www.planetary.org/exoplanets/list.php?exo=51+Pegasi+b

http://www.extrasolar.net/planettour.asp?PlanetID=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b

http://www.solstation.com/stars2/51pegasi.htm