Is bellerophin a planet

Answer 1

Yes. Bellerophon, or 51 Pegasi B as it is also known, has the distinction of being the first confirmed extrasolar planet found using the radial velocity technique. Located in 1995 by a team of European scientists under the direction of Didier Qeuloz, this planet was one of the extrasolar planets (planets found outside our own solar system) found in a then-new class of planets called Hot Jupiters. These astronomical bodies are gas-giant planets, very similar in make-up to our own Jupiter, but differ in that they orbit extremely close to their host star (oftentimes at a fraction of the distance that we orbit our own sun), and can have atmospheric temperatures of several thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They also exhibit very short orbital periods around the host star, sometimes a matter of days. Some of these such planets have been found to be so large that they challenge traditional theories on the limits between where a planet-mass object ends, and a solar-mass object begins.

The discovery of this type of planet has fundamentally changed our theories on planet formation. Previously, planetary formation theories were based on solely on information we had gathered about the make-up of our own solar-system, thus leading to the biased conclusion that we would find other planetary systems to be very similar to our own.

As we discover more and more of these extrasolar planets, we continue to find that the known universe has infinitely more variety than we give it credit for.