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Rare exoplanet 37 EP

HD 149026 b

RA 247.6230° · Dec 38.3475° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

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

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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • 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 May — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.75
diameter km
105808.3419
discovery facility
Subaru Telescope
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2005
dist ly
247.436
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1626
host star teff
6179
inclination
84.55
insolation
1095.91
mag
8.15
mass earth
120.7754
name
HD 149026 b
orbital period days
2.8759
radius earth
8.2947
semi major au
0.0436
spect
G0
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About HD 149026 b

HD 149026 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 247.4 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 8.15, has spectral type G0 and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,626 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 8.15, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 149026 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 HD 149026 b is a rare exoplanet

HD 149026 b scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked and Blasted by starlight — 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.