The primary companion (Gliese 86 A) is a K-type main-sequence
star of
spectral type K1V. The characteristics in comparison to the
Sun are 83% the mass, 79% the radius, and 50% the luminosity. The star has a close-orbiting massive
Jovian planet. Gliese 86 B is a
white dwarf located around 21 AU from the primary star, making the Gliese 86 system one of the tightest binaries known to host an extrasolar planet. but high contrast observations in 2005 suggested that the object is probably a white dwarf, as its spectrum does not exhibit molecular absorption features which are typical of brown dwarfs. Assuming the white dwarf has a mass about half that of the Sun and that the linear trend observed in radial velocity measurements is due to Gliese 86 B, a plausible orbit for this star around Gliese 86 A has a
semimajor axis of 18.42 AU and an
eccentricity of 0.3974. When both stars were on the main sequence, the separation between the two stars was closer, at around 9 AU. More precise measurements for the white dwarf give it a mass of 55% the mass of the Sun and a temperature of around 8200 K. ==Planetary system==