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Uncommon exoplanet 29 EP

HD 38283 b

RA 84.2605° · Dec -73.6998° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Puffy low-density world +12
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Puffy low-density world · +12
  • 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

  • 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 6.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — 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. ≈ 2.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
0.255
diameter km
178586.8
discovery facility
Anglo-Australian Telescope
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2010
dist ly
124.1399
eccentricity
0.41
eq temp k
348.58
host star teff
5981
insolation
2.4745
mag
6.69
mass earth
127.132
name
HD 38283 b
orbital period days
363.2
radius earth
14
semi major au
1.02
spect
F9.5 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

Nearby objects

About HD 38283 b

HD 38283 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 124.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 6.69, has spectral type F9.5 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 349 K.

Lighter than Neptune — a puffed-up ball of hydrogen and helium with no surface anywhere on it to stand on.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 6.69, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, HD 38283 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 38283 b is an uncommon exoplanet

HD 38283 b scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Puffy low-density world 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.