WASP-44b

Using the WASP-South station at the South African Astronomical Observatory, the SuperWASP project searched the night sky for potential planets that transited, or crossed in front of, their host stars at a roughly periodic rate.

WASP-44's reclassification as a potential planetary host came about after WASP-South scanned the Cetus constellation between July and November 2009.

[1] In 2010, the European team of astronomers used the CORALIE spectrograph on the 1.2m Leonhard Euler Telescope at Chile's La Silla Observatory.

For 4.2 hours on September 14, 2010, Euler observed WASP-44 in search of a slight dimming in brightness until a more precise light curve could be found.

The star is an estimated 900 million years old, although this age is uncertain, as error bars are large.

[4] Although less massive than Jupiter, the planet is bloated to a greater size because its proximity to its host star heats it, a common effect in such closely orbiting gas giants.