GQ Lupi

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GQ Lupi , also known as "GQ Lup" for short, is a star in the constellation Lupus that is accompanied by a planet or brown dwarf .

The star

GQ Lupi is about 400 light years (approx. 140 pc ) from Earth and, at two million years old, is still very young. It has about 70 percent of the solar mass .

The name part "GQ" follows the rules for naming variable stars and says that GQ Lupi is the 199th variable star that was discovered in the constellation "Lupus".

companion

GQ Lupi became known on March 31, 2005 when a working group from the Astrophysical Institute and the University Observatory of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena announced that an exoplanet orbiting GQ Lupi had been observed directly with the NACO instrument of the Very Large Telescope to have. However, the result was fraught with great uncertainties and has not yet been confirmed, so that it still cannot be ruled out that GQ Lupi's companion (with a very rough indication of 1 to 42 Jupiter masses ) is a brown Dwarf acts. If it turns out that GQ Lupi's companion is a brown dwarf, he will then be called "GQ Lupi B", as is usual for stars. Otherwise it would be the first direct image of an exoplanet, which is then called "GQ Lupi b". So far, however, the picture of the companion of the brown dwarf 2M1207 , published only a little later, has been rated as the first direct image of an exoplanet.

Web links

Commons : GQ Lupi  - collection of images, videos and audio files