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by goodcanadian 3236 days ago
"Wobble" is perhaps a imprecise term. What is actually measured is the doppler shift of a spectral line in the star. In other words, you are measuring the velocity of the star in the radial direction (towards and away from the Earth). By measuring how the velocity changes over time, you can get a orbital period for the planet. By measuring the magnitude of the velocity change, you can get a lower bound on the mass of the planet. It is only a lower bound as depending on the orbital inclination, some of the movement will be in the perpendicular direction (back and forth on the sky). We are unable to measure this movement precisely enough to detect (in most cases).