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Rare exoplanet 38 EP

Kepler-56 b

RA 293.7583° · Dec 41.8718° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
38 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Lava world +14
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Multi-planet system +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 38

12 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Multi-planet system · +6
  • Found by Kepler · +3

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.
  • Crowded system. One of at least 3 planets orbiting its star.

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 12.6 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.

Properties

density gcc
0.442
diameter km
83042.862
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2012
dist ly
2977.7847
eccentricity
0.04
eq temp k
1378
host star teff
4840
inclination
89.66
insolation
819.245
mag
12.598
mass earth
22.1
name
Kepler-56 b
orbital period days
10.5016
radius earth
6.51
semi major au
0.1028
sys num planets
3
sys num stars
1

About Kepler-56 b

Kepler-56 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 2,977.8 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.6, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,378 K and spans roughly 6.51 Earth radii.

Its surface is almost certainly an ocean of molten rock, kept liquid by the star it hugs.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 12.6, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-56 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 Kepler-56 b is a rare exoplanet

Kepler-56 b scores 38 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Lava world, Multi-planet system and Found by Kepler — 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.