HD 168443 is an ordinary yellow-hued star in the Serpens Cauda segment of the equatorialconstellation of Serpens. It is known to have two substellar companions. With an apparent visual magnitude of 6.92,[2] the star lies just below the nominal lower brightness limit of visibility to the normal human eye. This system is located at a distance of 127 light years from the Sun based on parallax,[1] but is drifting closer with a radial velocity of −48.7 km/s.[2]
HD 168443 is known to be orbited by a super-Jupiterexoplanet, discovered in 1999, and a brown dwarf, discovered in 2001. The brown dwarf takes 30 times longer to orbit the star than the planet.[7][8][9] Both have eccentric orbits.[4] An orbital fit to Hipparcos astrometric data suggested the brown dwarf has a mass of 34±12 MJ.[9] A 2022 study utilizing both Hipparcos and Gaia data instead measured a true mass of 17.3MJ for HD 168443 c, close to the minimum mass.[10] Test simulations of massless particles orbiting in between these two bodies show that all such objects are quickly ejected within two million years. That suggests any other planetary companions would be orbiting further out from the star.[11]