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Uncommon exoplanet 33 EP

XO-6 b

RA 94.7930° · Dec 73.8276° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • 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 10.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope.
  • 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 December — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.62
diameter km
295977.3888
discovery facility
XO
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2016
dist ly
768.0289
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1577
host star teff
6720
inclination
86
insolation
580.386
mag
10.247
mass earth
1398.452
name
XO-6 b
orbital period days
3.765
radius earth
23.2026
semi major au
0.0815
spect
F5
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About XO-6 b

XO-6 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 768 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 10.25, has spectral type F5 and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,577 K.

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

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 10.25, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, XO-6 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 XO-6 b is an uncommon exoplanet

XO-6 b scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, 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.