Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
70 Virginis
70 Virginis (also designated HD 217014 and SAO 090896, HR 5072) is a main sequence star in the constellation Virgo. It has a confirmed extrasolar planet 70 Virginis b (initially named Goldilocks), at least 6.6 Jupiter masses in size, located about 0.5AU from the star.
In 1996 Geoffrey Marcy used the then known, and uncertain, parallax of 0.112 to derive a distance from Earth of 8.9 parsecs (29 light years), and also derived the effective temperature of the planet to be about 90 degrees Celsius. This would have made the planet hospitable to life. More accurate Hipparcos measurements put its distance at 18.1 parsecs (59 light years +/- 0.77) and its derived mass at 1.12 solar masses, larger than originally thought1, leading to conditions on the planet making liquid water and life much less likely.
Reference
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details