1 Dec 2016

BD -08 2823 is a planetary system 137 light-years away in the constellation Sextans, made of an orange dwarf star (spectral type K3V) and at least two planets. The star is smaller and cooler than the Sun: 0.74 solar masses, 0.66 solar radius, and a surface temperature of of about 4500 °C. The innermost planet is at least as massive as Uranus and orbits 18 times closer to its star than the Earth does from the Sun. The second planet has at least the mass of Saturn and orbits at a distance similar to the one of Venus around the Sun. Both planets were discovered thanks to the HARPS spectrograph and announced in 2009 in an article whose authors include PlanetS astronomers from Geneva and Bern (Hébrard et al. 2009, http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2010/04/aa13525-09/aa13525-09.html).