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Rare exoplanet 43 EP

Kepler-642 b

RA 293.8346° · Dec 42.6249° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Sub-Neptune +5
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Sub-Neptune · +5
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Found by Kepler · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Lava world. Its surface is almost certainly an ocean of molten rock, kept liquid by the star it hugs.

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. Too light to be solid rock and too heavy to be all gas: most likely a deep global ocean or a thick steamy envelope over a rocky core.

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 13.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

density gcc
1.97
diameter km
36992.98
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2016
dist ly
2549.1766
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1810
host star teff
6570
inclination
89.58
insolation
719.373
mag
13.335
mass earth
8.75
name
Kepler-642 b
orbital period days
4.4175
radius earth
2.9
semi major au
0.0563
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Kepler-642 b

Kepler-642 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 2,549.2 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.34, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,810 K and spans roughly 2.9 Earth radii.

Its surface is almost certainly an ocean of molten rock, kept liquid by the star it hugs.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 13.34, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-642 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 Kepler-642 b is a rare exoplanet

Kepler-642 b scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Sub-Neptune, Lava world, Tidally locked and Found by Kepler — 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.