HD 30562 b
Encyclopedia
HD 30562 b is an extrasolar planet
Extrasolar planet
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...

 which orbits the F-type main sequence
Main sequence
The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...

 star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

 HD 30562
HD 30562
HD 30562 is a 6th magnitude F-type main sequence star located approximately 86 light years away in the constellation of Eridanus. In August 2009, it was found that this star has a Jupiter-like planet that orbits in a very eccentric path....

, located approximately 86 light years away in the constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 Eridanus
Eridanus (constellation)
Eridanus is a constellation. It is represented as a river; its name is the Ancient Greek name for the Po River. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is the sixth largest of the modern...

. This planet is unusual that it orbits in a very oval path like comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...

s in our solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...

. The semimajor axis of the orbit is 2.30 AU
Astronomical unit
An astronomical unit is a unit of length equal to about or approximately the mean Earth–Sun distance....

 and it ranges from 0.55 AU to 4.05 AU. It has minimum mass
Minimum mass
In astronomy, minimum mass is the lower-bound calculated mass of observed objects such as planets, stars and binary systems, nebulae, and black holes. Minimum mass is a widely cited statistic for extrasolar planets...

 1.29 times that of Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

. The orbital period
Orbital period
The orbital period is the time taken for a given object to make one complete orbit about another object.When mentioned without further qualification in astronomy this refers to the sidereal period of an astronomical object, which is calculated with respect to the stars.There are several kinds of...

 of this planet is 38 months compared with 12 months for the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. This eccentric Jupiter
Eccentric Jupiter
An eccentric Jupiter is a Jovian planet that orbits its star in an eccentric orbit. Eccentric Jupiters may disqualify a planetary system from having Earth-like planets in it because a massive gas giant with an eccentric orbit may remove all Earth mass planets from the habitable zone.To date, it...

 was discovered on August 12, 2009 by using the radial velocity method which was designed to study the wobble of stars cause by their planet’s gravity over the course of their orbit.
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