HD 154672 - Observational History

Observational History

HD 154672 was first targeted for a planet search in 2004 by the N2K Consortium, a collaboration of astronomers hoping to take radial velocity measurements of previously untargeted stars using Doppler spectroscopy; however, HD 154672 had been previously targeted by a series of surveys, and was previously included in the Henry Draper catalog and the catalog of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite.

N2K deliberately biased its search towards closely orbiting Jupiter-size planets (Hot Jupiters) in the orbit of metal-rich stars, as the consortium hoped to discover how the mass of a planet relates to its host star's metal content. Initially, HD 154672 was noted as a host to a short-orbit Hot Jupiter, although additional observations revealed that the prospective planetary body had a longer orbit than previously expected, as revealed by the Magellan Telescopes at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory.

Use of the Magellan Clay telescope's Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle spectrograph (MIKE) helped collect sixteen radial velocity measurements for HD 154672; a team of American astronomers and one from the Vatican City used these measurements to confirm the existence of planet HD 154672 b and to determine its mass.

The discovery of HD 154672's planet was reported in the Astronomical Journal on October 7, 2008 along with a planet in the orbit of HD 205739.