Anomaly exoplanet 75 EP

WASP-78 b

RA 63.7563° · Dec -22.1164° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges

75 pts · Anomaly

Anomaly 95 pts → Mythic

Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
Puffy low-density world +12
Hot Jupiter +10
Distant (>1000 ly) +10
Blasted by starlight +8
Confirmed exoplanet +5
Gas giant +4

Total score 75

20 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

Confirmed exoplanet · +5
Gas giant · +4
Hot Jupiter · +10
Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
Puffy low-density world · +12
Blasted by starlight · +8
Distant (>1000 ly) · +10

Trivia

What makes it special

Ultra-hot Jupiter. So hot that iron vaporises and rains back down as molten metal.
Cotton-candy planet. So low-density it would float on water.

Could we get there?

Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 43.2 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
Fastest probe ever. ≈ 3.8 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.
At 10% light speed. ≈ 24.6 thousand years in a starship at a tenth of light speed.
Distance. 2460 light-years from Earth.

Look-back time

Look-back time. Its light left before the last ice age ended.

Saying hello

Say hello. A radio message and its reply would take 4920 years round-trip.

Standing on it

A year here. A full year lasts just 2.2 Earth days.

By the numbers

Size. About 21.6× the width of Earth.
Volume. About 10.1 thousand Earths could fit inside it.
Mass. Roughly 353× Earth's mass — about 1.1 Jupiters.
Your weight. You'd weigh about 0.8× your Earth weight standing here.
Density. Less dense than water — drop it in a big enough ocean and it would float.
Temperature. Around 2470 K — hot enough to vaporise iron.

How we found it

Discovery. Found by SuperWASP using the transit method.

Properties

density gcc: 0.131
discovery facility: SuperWASP
discovery method: Transit
dist ly: 2460.0577
eccentricity: 0
eq temp k: 2469.7
insolation: 4812.6238
mass earth: 352.7913
name: WASP-78 b
orbital period days: 2.1752
radius earth: 21.6334
sys num planets: 1

About WASP-78 b

WASP-78 b is an anomaly exoplanet. It lies about 2,460.1 light-years from Earth, has an equilibrium temperature near 2,470 K, spans roughly 21.63 Earth radii and weighs about 352.79 Earth masses.

So hot that iron vaporises and rains back down as molten metal.

How to see it

Like any astronomical target, WASP-78 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-78 b is an anomaly exoplanet

WASP-78 b scores 75 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 20 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Hot Jupiter, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Puffy low-density world, Blasted by starlight and Distant (>1000 ly) — 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.