HD 20782 (HIP 15527; LTT 1582) is the primary of a wide binary system located in the southern constellation Fornax. It has an apparent magnitude of 7.38, making it readily visible in binoculars but not to the naked eye. The system is located relatively close at a distance of 117 light-years based on Gaia DR3 parallax measurements, but it is receding with a heliocentric radial velocity of . At its current distance, HD 20782's brightness is diminished by 0.12 magnitudes due to interstellar extinction and it has an absolute magnitude of +4.61.
HD 20782 has a stellar classification of G1.5 V, indicating that it is an ordinary G-type main-sequence star like our Sun. It has also been given a cooler class of G3 V. It has 96% the mass of the Sun and 1.17 times the radius of the Sun. It radiates 1.262 times the luminosity of the Sun from its photosphere at an effective temperature of, which is 35 K cooler than the Sun's temperature. When viewed in the night sky. the star has a yellow hue. HD 20782 is slightly metal deficient with an iron abundance 87.1% that of the Sun's or [Fe/H] = −0.06, and it is estimated to be 8.5 billion years old, which is nearly twice of the Sun's age. It spins modestly with a projected rotational velocity of .
HD 20781 is a G or K-type main-sequence star with a very large angular separation of 252 arcsec, corresponding to 9080 AU at the distance of HD 20782. In 2011, two Neptune-mass planets were announced around the nearby HD 20781, and initially they too were believed to be in eccentric orbits, but less so. However, later more detailed observations on this system revealed not only two more possible planets but also that all the planets in this system, in stark contrast to HD 20782, were likely in low eccentricity orbits.
An extremely eccentric extrasolar planet was announced around HD 20782 in 2006.[1] In 2009 this planet's orbit was narrowed down, and it was found to have the highest eccentricity of all known exoplanets; this distinction has stood since 2012.