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Rare exoplanet 47 EP

TOI-163 b

RA 79.7683° · Dec -71.8955° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
47 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Lava world +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
  • Found by TESS +4
Total score 47

3 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Found by TESS · +4

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 11.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope.
  • 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.

Properties

density gcc
0.49
diameter km
212903.542
discovery facility
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2019
dist ly
1342.8462
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1669
host star teff
6495
inclination
87.24
insolation
1489.1126
mag
11.467
mass earth
387.7526
name
TOI-163 b
orbital period days
4.2313
radius earth
16.6902
semi major au
0.058
spect
F
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About TOI-163 b

TOI-163 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 1,342.8 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 11.47, has spectral type F and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,669 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 11.47, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, TOI-163 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 TOI-163 b is a rare exoplanet

TOI-163 b scores 47 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight and Found by TESS — 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.