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Epic exoplanet 63 EP

WASP-189 b

RA 225.6867° · Dec -3.0315° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
63 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 63

15 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star · +14

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Ultra-hot Jupiter. So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

Hard to believe

  • It would float. It is less dense than water. Drop it in a big enough ocean and the whole world would bob on the surface.

What it actually is

  • Hugging its star. It orbits closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun, completing a lap in less time than Mercury takes.
  • What it is made of. Lighter than Neptune — a puffed-up ball of hydrogen and helium with no surface anywhere on it to stand on.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 6.6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.622
diameter km
231491.0953
discovery facility
CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS)
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2020
dist ly
325.2786
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
3353
host star teff
8000
inclination
84.03
insolation
8083.7169
mag
6.5978
mass earth
632.4785
name
WASP-189 b
orbital period days
2.724
radius earth
18.1473
semi major au
0.0505
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-189 b

WASP-189 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 325.3 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 6.6, has an equilibrium temperature near 3,353 K and spans roughly 18.15 Earth radii.

So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 6.6, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-189 b is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why WASP-189 b is an epic exoplanet

WASP-189 b scores 63 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight and Orbits a hot blue-white star — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.