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Rare exoplanet 39 EP

V830 Tau b

RA 68.2918° · Dec 24.5619° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Disputed — it may not be there at all +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Disputed — it may not be there at all · +10

Trivia

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 12.2 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 November — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

controversial
yes
density gcc
0.446
diameter km
178586.8
discovery facility
Multiple Observatories
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2016
dist ly
424.3648
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1213.95
host star teff
4250
inclination
55
insolation
370.0414
mag
12.23
mass earth
222.481
name
V830 Tau b
orbital period days
4.927
radius earth
14
semi major au
0.057
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About V830 Tau b

V830 Tau b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 424.4 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.23, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,214 K and spans roughly 14 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 12.23, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, V830 Tau 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 V830 Tau b is a rare exoplanet

V830 Tau 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, Gas giant, Hot Jupiter, Tidally locked and Disputed — it may not be there at all — 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.