HR 6094 Scorpii

(The Planet Project)

Sco A single "Jupiter" orbits a star that seems much like the Sun though with curious anomalies.

THE PLANET

The circle shows the location of the class G dwarf star HR 6094, found in the constellation Scorpius. The star's planet orbits with a period of 540.4 days, or 1.48 years, at an average distance of 1.26 Astronomical Units (189 million kilometers, 117 million miles), 26 percent greater than the Earth's path around the Sun, the stellar motion revealing a planet with a mass at least as great as Jupiter's. A rather high eccentricity takes the planet from as far as 1.92 AU from its parent star to 0.60 AU, closer to its star than Venus is from the Sun.

THE STAR

HR 6094, also called HD 147513, is a fifth magnitude (5.38) class G5 dwarf star in Scorpius. Too faint to have a proper or Greek letter name, or even Flamsteed number, it is known best by its numbers in the Bright Star(HR) and the Henry Draper (HD) Catalogues. From a distance of only 42 light years, it shines with a luminosity almost exactly the same as that of the Sun, but with a somewhat higher surface temperature of 5880 Kelvin, rather warm for its apparently cooler spectral class. While metal enrichment could have that effect, HR 6094's is not all that great, the iron-to-hydrogen ratio raised by just 15 percent. Such enrichment, however, is typical of stars with planets. Mass estimates range from just over a solar mass to as much as 10 percent greater than solar. The star is also said to be variable by up to 0.07 magnitudes, which does not fit the character of an ordinary G dwarf, which should be very stable.
Written by Jim Kaler. Return to The Planet Project or go to STARS.