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Uncommon exoplanet 29 EP

WASP-23 b

RA 101.1275° · Dec -42.7622° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10

Trivia

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 12.5 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — 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. ≈ 11.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
1.17
diameter km
137550.1046
discovery facility
SuperWASP
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2010
dist ly
676.7411
eccentricity
0.062
eq temp k
1076.55
host star teff
5150
inclination
88.39
insolation
317.4314
mag
12.539
mass earth
280.95
name
WASP-23 b
orbital period days
2.9444
radius earth
10.783
semi major au
0.0376
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-23 b

WASP-23 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 676.7 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.54, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,077 K and spans roughly 10.78 Earth radii.

It orbits closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun, completing a lap in less time than Mercury takes.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 12.54, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-23 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 WASP-23 b is an uncommon exoplanet

WASP-23 b scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Hot Jupiter 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.