Rare exoplanet 45 EP

HD 100546 b

RA 173.3555° · Dec -70.1948° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges

45 pts · Rare

Rare 46 pts → Epic

Directly imaged +16
Puffy low-density world +12
Frozen world +8
Confirmed exoplanet +5
Gas giant +4

Total score 45

1 more point to reach Epic.

Badges

Confirmed exoplanet · +5
Gas giant · +4
Frozen world · +8
Puffy low-density world · +12
Directly imaged · +16

Trivia

What makes it special

Frozen world. A deep-frozen world far from its star's warmth.
Cotton-candy planet. So low-density it would float on water.

Could we get there?

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

Getting there

Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 6.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
Fastest probe ever. ≈ 558.5 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
At 10% light speed. ≈ 3577 years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Distance. 358 light-years from Earth.

Look-back time

Look-back time. The light you'd see left around the year 1668.

Saying hello

Say hello. A radio message and its reply would take 715 years round-trip.

By the numbers

Size. About 77.3× the width of Earth.
Volume. About 462.6 thousand Earths could fit inside it.
Mass. Roughly 2702× Earth's mass — about 8.5 Jupiters.
Your weight. You'd weigh about 0.5× your Earth weight standing here.
Density. Less dense than water — drop it in a big enough ocean and it would float.
Temperature. A frigid -178°C — colder than dry ice.

How we found it

Discovery. Found by Paranal Observatory using the imaging method.

Properties

density gcc: 0.0321
discovery facility: Paranal Observatory
discovery method: Imaging
dist ly: 357.7181
eq temp k: 94.67
insolation: 0.0113
mass earth: 2701.5415
name: HD 100546 b
radius earth: 77.3421
sys num planets: 1

About HD 100546 b

HD 100546 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 357.7 light-years from Earth, has an equilibrium temperature near 95 K, spans roughly 77.34 Earth radii and weighs about 2,701.54 Earth masses.

A deep-frozen world far from its star's warmth.

How to see it

Like any astronomical target, HD 100546 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 100546 b is a rare exoplanet

HD 100546 b scores 45 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Frozen world, Puffy low-density world and Directly imaged — 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.