BD 20°2457

BD+20°2457 is a 10th magnitude K-type bright giant star located between 320 and 980 light years away in the constellation of Leo. This star is very metal-poor, containing only 10% as enriched with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium as our sun, almost classifying this as a population II star. On June 10, 2009, two planets were announced to be orbiting the star, with minimum masses 21.4 and 12.5 times the mass of Jupiter and orbital periods of 380 and 622 days for the inner and outer planets respectively. A dynamical analysis reveals that the proposed system is unstable on astronomically-short timescales and so the suggested planetary configuration is unlikely to be correct: further data is needed to determine a physically-plausible explanation for the radial velocity variations.