About this world
tau Boo b is a gas giant orbiting tau Boo, a yellow-white F-type star (type F7V) 51.1 light-years from Earth. It is about 1.1 times the size of Jupiter (its size estimated from its mass) and holds 6 Jupiter masses. It completes an orbit every 3.31 days at 0.049 AU from its star, closer than Mercury is to the Sun.
Its equilibrium temperature is about 1,682 K (1,409 °C): far too hot for liquid water on its surface. At its size it almost certainly keeps a deep envelope of hydrogen and helium.
It was discovered in 1996 by radial velocity with Lick Observatory. The star wobbles toward and away from us, Doppler-shifting its spectrum.