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Rare exoplanet 37 EP

Gaia-2 b

RA 110.7353° · Dec 67.2527° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8

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 11.3 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 January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

density gcc
0.439
diameter km
189024.8475
discovery facility
European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia Satellite
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2022
dist ly
682.4129
eq temp k
1213.23
host star teff
5720
inclination
85.21
insolation
512.0235
mag
11.277
mass earth
259.6658
name
Gaia-2 b
orbital period days
3.6915
radius earth
14.8183
semi major au
0.0467
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Gaia-2 b

Gaia-2 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 682.4 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 11.28, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,213 K and spans roughly 14.82 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 11.28, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, Gaia-2 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 Gaia-2 b is a rare exoplanet

Gaia-2 b scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Hot Jupiter, Tidally locked and Orbits a Sun-like star — 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.