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Epic exoplanet 71 EP

FU Tau b

RA 65.8975° · Dec 25.0507° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
71 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Directly imaged +16
  • Orbits beyond Neptune's distance +12
  • Orbits a red dwarf +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 71

7 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Directly imaged · +16
  • Orbits a red dwarf · +8
  • Orbits beyond Neptune's distance · +12

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

  • Denser than iron. It is packed tighter than solid iron — whatever it is made of, it is not ordinary rock.

What it actually is

  • What it is made of. Denser than Earth — a solid world of rock and iron, with no meaningful atmosphere to speak of by mass.

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

  • 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 November — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 7.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
15.4
diameter km
155625.64
discovery facility
Spitzer Space Telescope
discovery method
Imaging
discovery year
2008
dist ly
435.4021
eq temp k
2375
host star teff
2838
insolation
0
mass earth
5085.28
name
FU Tau b
radius earth
12.2
semi major au
800
spect
M7.25
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

Nearby objects

About FU Tau b

FU Tau b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 435.4 light-years from Earth, has spectral type M7.25, has an equilibrium temperature near 2,375 K and spans roughly 12.2 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

Like any astronomical target, FU Tau 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 FU Tau b is an epic exoplanet

FU Tau b scores 71 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Directly imaged, Orbits a red dwarf and Orbits beyond Neptune's distance — 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.