The star is located fairly close to the Solar System: according to astrometric measurements made by the Gaia space observatory, it exhibits a parallax of 72.0070 milliarcseconds, corresponding to a distance of 45.30 light-years.

Like the Sun, 47 Ursae Majoris is on the main sequence, converting hydrogen to helium in its core by nuclear fusion.

[9] The low level of magnetic activity makes it a Maunder Minimum candidate star.

On their discoveries the planets were successively designated 47 Ursau Majoris b, c and d. In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched NameExoWorlds, a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars.

[7] In 1996 an exoplanet (47 UMa b) was announced in orbit around 47 Ursae Majoris by Geoffrey Marcy and R. Paul Butler.

[19] In 2001, preliminary astrometric measurements made by the Hipparcos probe suggested the orbit of 47 UMa b is inclined at an angle of 63.1° to the plane of the sky, implying the planet's true mass is around 2.9 times that of Jupiter.

[20] However, subsequent analysis suggested the Hipparcos measurements were not precise enough to accurately determine the orbits of substellar companions, and the inclination and true mass remain unknown.

[24] On the other hand, the Catalog of Nearby Exoplanets gives a period of 2,190 days, which would put the planets close to a 2:1 ratio of orbital periods, though the reference for these parameters is uncertain: the original Fischer et al. paper is cited as a reference in spite of the fact that it gives different parameters,[22][25] though this solution has been adopted by the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

This 1.64 MJ planet has an orbital period of 14,002 days, or 38.33 years, and a semi-major axis of 11.6 AU with a moderate eccentricity of 0.16.

[29] Because of its planetary system, 47 Ursae Majoris was listed as one of the top 100 target stars for NASA's former Terrestrial Planet Finder mission.