BD+14 4559 b
Artist's impression of the exoplanet BD+14 4599 b. View from the surface of its hypothetical moon. | |
| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | Andrzej Niedzielski |
| Discovery site | La Silla Observatory |
| Discovery date | June 10, 2009 |
| radial velocity | |
| Orbital characteristics | |
| Apastron | 1.002 AU (149,900,000 km) |
| Periastron | 0.552 AU (82,600,000 km) |
| 0.777 AU (116,200,000 km) | |
| Eccentricity | 0.29 ± 0.03 |
| 268.94 ± 0.99 d | |
| 53293.71 ± 6.35 | |
| 87.64 ± 7.87 | |
| Physical characteristics | |
| ~1.05 RJ | |
| Temperature | 205 K (−68 °C; −91 °F) |
BD+14 4559 b, named Pirx, is an exoplanet orbiting the K-type main sequence star BD+14 4559 about 161 light-years (49 parsecs, or nearly 1.5×1015 km) from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. It orbits its star within the habitable zone at a distance of 0.777 AU, close to that of Venus, but its star is less energetic, thus its habitable zone is closer to it than Earth. 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.
The planet was named during the NameExoWorlds campaign by Poland. Pilot Pirx is a fictional character from stories by Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem.