In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched NameExoWorlds, a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars.

[5] The winning name was submitted by the Vega Astronomy Club of Morocco and honours the 11th-century astronomer Ibn al-Saffar of Muslim Spain.

[6] Upsilon Andromedae b was detected by the variations in its star's radial velocity caused by the planet's gravity.

The variations were detected by making sensitive measurements of the Doppler shift of Upsilon Andromedae's spectrum.

[1] Given the planet's high mass, it is likely that Upsilon Andromedae b is a gas giant with no solid surface.

[11] The outer shell of dark, opaque, hot cloud is assumed to consist of vanadium and titanium oxides, but other compounds like tholins cannot be ruled out yet.

[1] The planet is unlikely to have large moons, since tidal forces would either eject them from orbit or destroy them on short timescales compared to the age of the system.

The mechanism may be similar to that responsible for the activity of RS Canum Venaticorum variable stars, or the interaction between Jupiter and its moon Io.