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Common exoplanet 21 EP

HD 158996 b

RA 259.9051° · Dec 80.1364° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye +12
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye · +12

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Denser than iron. It is packed tighter than solid iron — whatever it is made of, it is not ordinary rock.

What it actually is

  • What it is made of. Denser than Earth — a solid world of rock and iron, with no meaningful atmosphere to speak of by mass.

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 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around June — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 16.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
13.1
diameter km
156901.26
discovery facility
Bohyunsan Optical Astronomical Observatory
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2018
dist ly
925.1708
eccentricity
0.13
eq temp k
960.27
host star teff
4069
insolation
234.6259
mag
5.7229
mass earth
4449.62
name
HD 158996 b
orbital period days
820.2
radius earth
12.3
semi major au
2.1
spect
K5 III
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About HD 158996 b

HD 158996 b is a common exoplanet. It lies about 925.2 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 5.72, has spectral type K5 III and has an equilibrium temperature near 960 K.

Denser than Earth — a solid world of rock and iron, with no meaningful atmosphere to speak of by mass.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 5.72, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HD 158996 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 158996 b is a common exoplanet

HD 158996 b scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant and Its star is visible to the naked eye — 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.