[Fe/H] 0.14 Discoverer(s) Frink et al. | Discovery date January 8, 2002 Discovery status Confirmed | |
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Iota Draconis b, also named Hypatia, is an exoplanet orbiting the K-type giant star Iota Draconis about 101.2 light-years (31 parsecs, or nearly 7014293200000000000♠2.932×1014 km) from Earth in the constellation Draco. The exoplanet was found by using the radial velocity method, from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in the spectrum of the planet's parent star. It was the first planet discovered orbiting a giant star.
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Following its discovery the planet was designated Iota Draconis b. In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced that the winning name for this planet was Hypatia. The winning name was submitted by Hypatia, a student society of the Physics Faculty of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Hypatia was a famous Greek astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher.
Mass, radius and temperature
Iota Draconis b is a "super-Jupiter" a planet that has a radius and mass larger than that of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. It has a temperature of 598 K (325 °C; 617 °F). It has an estimated mass of around 8.82 MJ and a potential radius of around 12 R⊕ based on its mass, since it is more massive than Jupiter.
Host star
The planet orbits a (K-type) giant star named Iota Draconis. The star has exhausted the hydrogen supply in its core and is currently fusing helium. The star has a mass of 1.82 M☉ and a radius of around 12 R☉. It has a surface temperature of 4545 K and is about 10 billion years old based on its evolution. In comparison, the Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and has a surface temperature of 5778 K.
The star's apparent magnitude, a measure of how bright it appears from Earth, is 3.31. Therefore, Iota Draconis can be seen with the naked eye.
Orbit
Iota Draconis b orbits its star with nearly 55 times the Sun's luminosity (55 L☉) every 511 days at a maximum distance of 1.275 AU (compared to Mars' orbital distance from the Sun, which is 1.52 AU) It has a very eccentric orbit, with an eccentricity of 0.7124.
Discovery
Discovered in 2002 during a radial velocity study of K-class giant stars, its eccentric orbit aided its detection, as giant stars have pulsations which can mimic the presence of a planet.