2M1207b is around 100 times fainter in the sky than its companion.
It was first spotted as a "faint reddish speck of light" in 2004 by the VLT.
After the initial observation, there was some question as to whether the objects might be merely an optical double, but subsequent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the VLT have shown that the objects move together and are therefore presumably a binary system.

An initial photometric estimate for the distance to 2M1207b was 70 parsecs.
In December 2005, American astronomer Eric Mamajek reported a more accurate distance (53 ± 6 parsecs) to 2M1207b using the moving-cluster method.
 Recent trigonometric parallax results have confirmed this moving-cluster distance, leading to a distance estimate of 52.75+1.04
−1.00 parsecs or 172 ± 3 light years.
2M1207b is around 100 times fainter in the sky than its companion. It was first spotted as a "faint reddish speck of light" in 2004 by the VLT. After the initial observation, there was some question as to whether the objects might be merely an optical double, but subsequent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the VLT have shown that the objects move together and are therefore presumably a binary system.
An initial photometric estimate for the distance to 2M1207b was 70 parsecs. In December 2005, American astronomer Eric Mamajek reported a more accurate distance (53 ± 6 parsecs) to 2M1207b using the moving-cluster method.  Recent trigonometric parallax results have confirmed this moving-cluster distance, leading to a distance estimate of 52.75+1.04
−1.00 parsecs or 172 ± 3 light years.
2M1207b