Planets found by radial velocity
1,201 of the confirmed exoplanets in this catalog, 19% of the total, were found by radial velocity: measuring the wobble a planet's gravity pulls in its star, the first of them in 1995.
A planet does not orbit its star so much as the two orbit each other around a shared centre of mass. The star therefore traces a small circle, moving toward us and away from us in turn, and that motion shifts its light toward the blue and then the red. Modern spectrographs measure that shift down to a metre per second, which is walking pace, across trillions of kilometres.
This is the oldest working method and it found the first planet around a Sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b, in 1995. It gives a minimum mass rather than a true mass, because a wobble seen at an unknown tilt could be a small planet in the plane of our view or a bigger one seen at an angle. Where a planet also transits, the tilt is known and the minimum becomes the real thing.
Small planets far out. The signal scales with the planet's mass and falls off with its distance from the star, and measuring a full orbit takes at least one full year of the planet's own. Jupiter's effect on the Sun is 12 metres per second over 12 years; Earth's is 9 centimetres per second, near the edge of what any instrument can do.
| # | World | Distance | Discovered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Proxima Cen b | 4.2 ly | 2016 |
| 2 | Proxima Cen d | 4.2 ly | 2025 |
| 3 | Barnard b | 6.0 ly | 2024 |
| 4 | Barnard c | 6.0 ly | 2025 |
| 5 | Barnard d | 6.0 ly | 2025 |
| 6 | Barnard e | 6.0 ly | 2025 |
| 7 | eps Eri b | 10.4 ly | 2000 |
| 8 | GJ 887 b | 10.7 ly | 2020 |
| 9 | GJ 887 c | 10.7 ly | 2020 |
| 10 | GJ 887 d | 10.7 ly | 2026 |
| 11 | GJ 887 e | 10.7 ly | 2026 |
| 12 | Ross 128 b | 11.0 ly | 2017 |
| 13 | Gl 725 A b | 11.5 ly | 2025 |
| 14 | GJ 15 A b | 11.6 ly | 2014 |
| 15 | GJ 15 A c | 11.6 ly | 2018 |
| 16 | tau Cet f | 11.8 ly | 2017 |
| 17 | tau Cet g | 11.8 ly | 2017 |
| 18 | tau Cet h | 11.8 ly | 2017 |
| 19 | eps Ind A b | 11.9 ly | 2019 |
| 20 | GJ 1061 b | 12.0 ly | 2020 |
| 21 | GJ 1061 c | 12.0 ly | 2020 |
| 22 | GJ 1061 d | 12.0 ly | 2020 |
| 23 | YZ Cet b | 12.1 ly | 2017 |
| 24 | YZ Cet c | 12.1 ly | 2017 |
| 25 | YZ Cet d | 12.1 ly | 2017 |
Showing the 25 nearest of 1,199 with a measured distance.
How does the radial velocity method find planets?
1,201 of the confirmed exoplanets in this catalog, 19% of the total, were found by radial velocity: measuring the wobble a planet's gravity pulls in its star, the first of them in 1995.
What was the first planet found by radial velocity?
51 Peg b, confirmed in 1995. The method has found 1,201 confirmed worlds since, the most recent of them in 2026.
What can this method not see?
Small planets far out. The signal scales with the planet's mass and falls off with its distance from the star, and measuring a full orbit takes at least one full year of the planet's own. Jupiter's effect on the Sun is 12 metres per second over 12 years; Earth's is 9 centimetres per second, near the edge of what any instrument can do.
What is a minimum mass, and why does this method only give one?
The wobble we measure is only the part of the star's motion aimed toward or away from us. If the system is tilted, some of the real motion is sideways and invisible, so the mass we compute is a floor. This site writes those values as 'at least' rather than pretending otherwise.
How small a wobble can be measured?
The best spectrographs reach a few tens of centimetres per second. The limit is not the instrument any more but the star itself: its surface boils and its spots come and go, which produces a jitter that mimics a planet.
Keep exploring: every detection method · the term itself · discoveries by year