About b Cen AB b
b Cen AB b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 319.9 light-years from Earth, spans roughly 12.4 Earth radii, weighs about 3,464.33 Earth masses and completes an orbit every 1,790,000 days.
Packed denser than solid iron.
Epic exoplanet 53 EP
b Cen AB b
RA 220.4898° · Dec -37.7936° · exoplanet
Score breakdown
· 5 badgesEpic 68 pts → Anomaly
- Denser than iron +18
- Directly imaged +16
- Long-period world +10
- Confirmed exoplanet +5
- Gas giant +4
Total score 53
15 more points to reach Anomaly.
Badges
- Confirmed exoplanet · +5
- Gas giant · +4
- Long-period world · +10
- Denser than iron · +18
- Directly imaged · +16
Trivia
What makes it special
- Heavyweight. Packed denser than solid iron.
Could we get there?
- Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.
Getting there
- Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 5.6 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
- Fastest probe ever. ≈ 499.6 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
- At 10% light speed. ≈ 3199 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
- Distance. 320 light-years from Earth.
Look-back time
- Look-back time. The light you'd see left around the year 1706.
Saying hello
- Say hello. A radio message and its reply would take 640 years round-trip.
Standing on it
- A year here. A full year lasts about 4901 Earth years.
By the numbers
- Size. About 12.4× the width of Earth.
- Volume. About 1907 Earths could fit inside it.
- Mass. Roughly 3464× Earth's mass — about 10.9 Jupiters.
- Your weight. You'd weigh about 22.5× your Earth weight standing here.
- Density. Denser than solid iron.
How we found it
- Discovery. Found by Paranal Observatory using the imaging method.
Properties
- density gcc
- 9.98
- discovery facility
- Paranal Observatory
- discovery method
- Imaging
- dist ly
- 319.9378
- eccentricity
- 0.4
- mass earth
- 3464.3296
- name
- b Cen AB b
- orbital period days
- 1790000
- radius earth
- 12.4
- sys num planets
- 1
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, b Cen AB 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 b Cen AB b is an epic exoplanet
b Cen AB b scores 53 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 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Long-period world, Denser than iron and Directly imaged — 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.