HR 8799 e is a large exoplanet, orbiting the star HR 8799, which lies 129 light-years from Earth. This gas giant is between 5 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter. Due to their young age and high temperature all four discovered planets in the HR 8799 system are large, compared to all gas giants in the Solar System.
Artistic rendering of HR 8799 e as a hot gas giant
HR 8799 is a roughly 30 million-year-old main-sequence star located 133.3 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It has roughly 1.5 times the Sun's mass and 4.9 times its luminosity. It is part of a system that also contains a debris disk and at least four massive planets. Those planets, along with Fomalhaut b, were the first exoplanets whose orbital motion was confirmed by direct imaging. The star is a Gamma Doradus variable: its luminosity changes because of non-radial pulsations of its surface. The star is also classified as a Lambda Boötis star, which means its surface layers are depleted in iron peak elements. It is the only known star which is simultaneously a Gamma Doradus variable, a Lambda Boötis type, and a Vega-like star.
The spectrum is that of a giant exoplanet, orbiting around the bright and very young star HR 8799, about 130 light-years away. This spectrum of the star and the planet was obtained with the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope.
Spitzer infrared image of HR 8799's debris disk, January 2009. The small dot in the centre is the size of Pluto's orbit.
Direct image of exoplanets around the star HR 8799 using a vortex coronagraph on a 1.5 m portion of the Hale Telescope