This month on Exoplanets, yet another world with a claim to primacy — Dimidium, or 51 Pegasi b — is the first other world discovered in orbit of a main sequence star. That star, 51 Pegasi, is located about fifty light years away from us in, as the name suggests, the Pegasus constellation.

Dimidium, the name selected in 2015 as part of the NameExoWorlds program, is Latin for “half” in reference to the planet being roughly half (0.46) the mass of Jupiter.

There is also a category of exoplanets called “hot Jupiters,” which resemble our gas giant but orbit closer to their respective stars and thus have higher surface temperatures. Dimidium is the planet whose characteristics define that category.

I feel that a hot Jupiter like this deserves some colorful illustrations, so I commissioned myself to imagine one of the aerial vehicles that the local inhabitants might use to travel within the atmosphere:

This is, it cannot be overstated, pure speculation. We have no way of knowing how tall their balloons are, or whether the people there may have very long fanglike teeth.

And finally, NASA made another one of those cool posters for this world:

Soar the skies!