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Rare exoplanet 39 EP

K2-97 b

RA 127.7628° · Dec 10.8476° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • 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 12.5 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 January — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.392
diameter km
171580.7995
discovery facility
K2
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2016
dist ly
2865.0522
eccentricity
0.207
eq temp k
1566
host star teff
4673
inclination
75.5
insolation
114.149
mag
12.486
mass earth
174.4878
name
K2-97 b
orbital period days
8.4071
radius earth
13.4508
semi major au
0.0854
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About K2-97 b

K2-97 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 2,865.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.49, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,566 K and spans roughly 13.45 Earth radii.

Its surface is almost certainly an ocean of molten rock, kept liquid by the star it hugs.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 12.49, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, K2-97 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 K2-97 b is a rare exoplanet

K2-97 b scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), 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.