GQ Lupi

GQ Lupi, also briefly called " GQ Lup ," is a star in the constellation Lupus, which is accompanied by a planet or brown dwarf.

The Star

GQ Lupi is about 400 light-years ( 140 pc) away from Earth and with an age of two million years ago still very young. He has about 70 percent of the solar mass.

The part of the name " GQ " follows the rules for naming a variable star and says that GQ Lupi is the 199te variable star, which was discovered in the constellation "lupus".

Companion

GQ Lupi was announced on 31 March 2005 when a working group of the Astrophysical Institute and University Observatory, Friedrich Schiller University Jena announced an exoplanet, the GQ Lupi orbits, directly observed with the NACO instrument of the Very Large Telescope have to. The result was, however, fraught with uncertainty and could not yet be confirmed, so it can not be excluded as before, that it is the companion of GQ Lupi ( with a very rough indication from 1 to 42 Jupiter masses) a brown dwarf is. If it turns out that the companion of GQ Lupi is a brown dwarf, it will then be called " GQ Lupi B" as it is common for stars. Otherwise, it would be the first direct recording of an exoplanet, which is then called " GQ Lupi b". So far, only a little later published image of the companion of the brown dwarf 2M1207 is regarded as the first direct recording of an exoplanet.

275275
de