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Epic exoplanet 72 EP

Kepler-238 b

RA 287.8971° · Dec 40.6378° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
72 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Lava world +14
  • Richly packed system +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Super-Earth +8
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Blasted by starlight +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 72

6 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Super-Earth · +8
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Richly packed system · +14
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Found by Kepler · +3
  • 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

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

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. Denser than Earth — a solid world of rock and iron, with no meaningful atmosphere to speak of by mass.
  • Crowded system. One of at least 5 planets orbiting its star.

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 15.3 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.

Properties

density gcc
526
diameter km
22068.226
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2014
dist ly
5866.731
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1642
host star teff
5751
inclination
77.03
insolation
2500.588
mag
15.297
mass earth
3305.02
name
Kepler-238 b
orbital period days
2.0909
radius earth
1.73
semi major au
0.034
sys num planets
5
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Kepler-238 b

Kepler-238 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 5,866.7 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 15.3, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,642 K and spans roughly 1.73 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 15.3, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-238 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 Kepler-238 b is an epic exoplanet

Kepler-238 b scores 72 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Super-Earth, Lava world, Tidally locked, Richly packed system, Blasted by starlight and Found by Kepler — 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.