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Epic exoplanet 61 EP

WASP-33 b

RA 36.7127° · Dec 37.5504° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
61 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Two suns in its sky +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 61

17 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Two suns in its sky · +12

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Ultra-hot Jupiter. So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

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 8.1 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.689
diameter km
227773.9036
discovery facility
SuperWASP
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2010
dist ly
397.7277
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
2781.7
host star teff
7430
inclination
86.63
insolation
9392.0471
mag
8.14
mass earth
665.2182
multi star system
yes
name
WASP-33 b
orbital period days
1.2199
radius earth
17.8559
semi major au
0.0239
spect
A
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
2
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-33 b

WASP-33 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 397.7 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 8.14, has spectral type A and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,782 K.

So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 8.14, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-33 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 WASP-33 b is an epic exoplanet

WASP-33 b scores 61 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 17 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight and Two suns in its sky — 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.