HIP 12961 and Its Companion Planet

HIP 12961 is a star 76.2 light-years away with one known planet in orbit. The host is an M-type star, a small, cool red dwarf, with a reported mass of 0.69 solar masses and a radius of 0.65 solar radii. Its temperature is 3900 K. All three of these stellar measurements are smaller or cooler than the corresponding values for the Sun.

The single planet, HIP 12961 b, was discovered in 2010 by the radial velocity method, which detects the wobble a planet's gravity induces in its star's motion. Its minimum mass is 114 Earth masses, so its true mass is at least this large, and that minimum is larger than Earth's mass. HIP 12961 b completes one orbit every 57.4 days.