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Rare exoplanet 43 EP

Gaia-1 b

RA 90.6437° · Dec -0.5771° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
43 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 43

7 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8

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 13.2 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 20.8 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
1.12
diameter km
175727.3355
discovery facility
European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia Satellite
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2022
dist ly
1186.0989
eq temp k
1159.07
host star teff
5470
inclination
85.73
insolation
426.5351
mag
13.242
mass earth
533.9517
name
Gaia-1 b
orbital period days
3.0525
radius earth
13.7758
semi major au
0.0405
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Gaia-1 b

Gaia-1 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 1,186.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.24, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,159 K and spans roughly 13.78 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 13.24, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Gaia-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 Gaia-1 b is a rare exoplanet

Gaia-1 b scores 43 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Hot Jupiter, Tidally locked 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.