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Uncommon exoplanet 33 EP

Wendelstein-1 b

RA 299.0506° · Dec 17.5700° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10

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 15.6 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.

Properties

density gcc
0.72
diameter km
147473.9511
discovery facility
Haleakala Observatory
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2020
dist ly
995.7543
eccentricity
0.012
eq temp k
2198
host star teff
4251
inclination
86.12
insolation
113.6142
mag
15.564
mass earth
188.1554
name
Wendelstein-1 b
orbital period days
2.6634
radius earth
11.561
semi major au
0.0282
spect
K7 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Wendelstein-1 b

Wendelstein-1 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 995.8 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 15.56, has spectral type K7 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,198 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 15.56, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Wendelstein-1 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 Wendelstein-1 b is an uncommon exoplanet

Wendelstein-1 b scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Lava world and Tidally locked — 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.