I will be the first to admit that the title of this post is a little misleading. After all, even the closest planet orbiting another star is too faint to see from Earth without a particularly big telescope. But tonight presents an opportunity to easily see a bright star with the unaided eye which does have a planet orbiting it. Unlike all other stars to date discovered with planets orbiting them, Fomalhaut is easily visible to the unaided eye, and can be easily located above the Eastern horizon after 9 pm tonight (see finder chart below).
The planet orbiting Fomalhaut is estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass and is called Fomalhaut b by astronomers. Further information can be found here and here.
As an aside, at the time of writing there are 564 known planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Further information can be found at the JPL PlanetQuest website.
