Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
First evidence for a planet around Beta Cancri was presented in 2008, when variations of the host star's radial velocity with an period of 673 days, but at that time an explanation to the radial velocity variations (such as a planet) wasn't presented. In 2014, Lee et al. found further evidence for the planet's existence, finding a different period of 605.2 days. After rulling out alternative explanations for the radial velocity variations, such as stellar variability, its existence could be confirmed.
Beta Cancri b was discovered with doppler spectroscopy, also known as the radial velocity method, which consists on observing small variations in the star's spectrum, which are radial velocity variations and happen because the planet is able to gravitationally pull its host star.
Beta Cancri (Altarf), the brightest star in Cancer, is one of the largest stars known to host exoplanets. It is a K-type giant with 70% more mass than the Sun but a diameter 50 times larger. It cooled to an effective temperature of 4,100 K, which is 1,700 degrees cooler than the Sun, but is 700 times more luminous than the Sun. It can be seen close to Procyon, which outshine it.
Category