The first planetary system ever found around a normal star consists of three planets in orbit around Upsilon Andromedae. The innermost (and previously known) of the three planets, Upsilon Andromedae b (shown here), contains at least three-quarters of the mass of Jupiter and orbits only 0.06 AU from the star. It traverses a circular orbit every 4.61 days. The two outer planets are both new discoveries and have elliptical orbits. The system was independently discovered by the Marcy/Butler team, Noyes et al. at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Timothy Brown of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Copyright: Lynette R. Cook Return to article To the Currents home page