Latest Didier Queloz Stories

Winners are the astronomers behind La Silla’s world-leading HARPS instrument World-renowned Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory have been awarded the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their work on exoplanets. The foundation recognized their groundbreaking efforts in developing “new astronomical instruments and experimental techniques that led to the observation of planets outside the solar system”. These...

Mass and density of smallest exoplanet finally measuredThe longest set of HARPS measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b, revealing its mass as five times that of Earth's. Combined with CoRoT-7b's known radius, which is less than twice that of our terrestrial home, this tells us that the exoplanet's density is quite similar to the Earth's, suggesting a solid, rocky world. The extensive dataset also reveals the...