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Epic exoplanet 55 EP

TOI-169 b

RA 16.7787° · Dec -75.1989° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 8 badges
55 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
  • Found by TESS +4
Total score 55

23 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Found by TESS · +4
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8

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 12.4 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.76
diameter km
155280.8909
discovery facility
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2020
dist ly
1330.1946
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1715
host star teff
5880
inclination
80.98
insolation
1443
mag
12.355
mass earth
251.4035
name
TOI-169 b
orbital period days
2.2554
radius earth
12.173
semi major au
0.0352
spect
G1 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About TOI-169 b

TOI-169 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 1,330.2 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.36, has spectral type G1 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,715 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 12.36, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, TOI-169 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 TOI-169 b is an epic exoplanet

TOI-169 b scores 55 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 23 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 8 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight, Found by TESS 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.