 HD 205739's designation is from the Henry Draper catalogue. The star was also observed by Hipparcos, which released its catalogue in 1997. The observations that led to the discovery of the planet HD 205739 b started when the N2K Consortium started an extended search for planets around 300 stars not usually targeted by Doppler spectroscopy surveys. In the case of HD 205739, the star was observed using the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. HD 205739 was selected primarily because it was a metal-rich star; the N2K collaboration biased their search towards metal-rich stars with closely orbiting Jupiter-size planets, hoping to find a connection between a star's metallicity and its planets' masses.
