Lusitânia

A faint yellow-orange star in the heart of the Milky Way as its band passes through northern Monoceros, near the borders of that constellation with neighbouring Orion and Gemini. At eighth magnitude, Lusitânia is far too faint to be visible to the naked eye. It lies some 114 light years from the Solar System, and is similar to the Sun in many ways, being a metal-rich dwarf star some five billion years old. It is, however, rather less massive and cooler than the Sun, and it shines with only about sixty per cent of the Sun's luminosity.

Lusitânia is notable for the existence of an extrasolar planet in orbit, designated HD 456522 b or Viriato. This planet is a comparatively small gas giant with about half the mass of Jupiter, following a relatively eccentric but close orbit of the star (if the planet was within the Solar System, its orbit would be within that of Mercury).

The name Lusitânia for this star was selected by Portugal as part of the international Name Exoworlds project. It comes from the name of the Roman province that historically encompassed Portugal, while the name of its planet Viriato comes from a leader of the people of that region who resisted Roman rule.