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Common exoplanet 19 EP

HAT-P-12 b

RA 209.3886° · Dec 43.4933° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
19 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 19

3 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Tidally locked · +10

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 12.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • 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 April — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

density gcc
0.3192
diameter km
137116.3938
discovery facility
HATNet
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2009
dist ly
465.591
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
963
host star teff
4650
inclination
89
insolation
118.075
mag
12.665
mass earth
67.059
name
HAT-P-12 b
orbital period days
3.2131
radius earth
10.749
semi major au
0.0384
spect
K4
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About HAT-P-12 b

HAT-P-12 b is a common exoplanet. It lies about 465.6 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.66, has spectral type K4 and has an equilibrium temperature near 963 K.

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 12.66, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, HAT-P-12 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 HAT-P-12 b is a common exoplanet

HAT-P-12 b scores 19 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant and Tidally locked — 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.