The planet is at most two times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting every 227 days at three quarters of the distance between the Earth and Sun.
[2][3] The ELODIE Planet Search Survey, undertaken using the ELODIE spectrograph at the Haute-Provence Observatory in southeastern France, was a large-scale search for extrasolar planets orbiting G-type and F-type dwarf stars visible from the Northern Hemisphere through use of the radial velocity method (the orbit of a planet tugs on its host star as it orbits, causing a perceived Doppler effect in the star's spectrum).
This survey, which started in 1994, led to the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet discovered in the orbit of a sunlike star.
The spectrum was then analyzed to see if HD 8574 were active, a factor that could mask or mimic the signal of an orbiting planet.
[4] In the case of HD 8574, ELODIE obtained 41 radial velocity measurements, which had, at the time of the discovery paper, been collected since January 11, 1998.
[4] The star has an apparent magnitude of 7.12, and is thus extremely faint (if visible at all) as seen from the unaided eye of an observer on Earth.