← Back to dex
Epic exoplanet 53 EP

Qatar-8 b

RA 157.4123° · Dec 70.5271° · exoplanet

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 6 badges
53 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Lava world +14
  • Puffy low-density world +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 53

25 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Puffy low-density world · +12
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8

Trivia

What makes it special

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

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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around February — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.216
diameter km
183734.7559
discovery facility
Qatar
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2019
dist ly
918.1226
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1457
host star teff
5738
inclination
89.29
insolation
698.148
mag
11.71
mass earth
117.9149
name
Qatar-8 b
orbital period days
3.7149
radius earth
14.4036
semi major au
0.0474
spect
G0 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Qatar-8 b

Qatar-8 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 918.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 11.71, has spectral type G0 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,457 K.

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

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 11.71, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, Qatar-8 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 Qatar-8 b is an epic exoplanet

Qatar-8 b scores 53 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 25 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked, Puffy low-density world and Orbits a Sun-like 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.