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Uncommon exoplanet 25 EP

Kepler-279 d

RA 287.3913° · Dec 42.1948° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Multi-planet system +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Sub-Neptune +5
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Sub-Neptune · +5
  • Multi-planet system · +6
  • Found by Kepler · +3

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.
  • Crowded system. One of at least 4 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 13.6 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.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.3
diameter km
39544.22
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2013
dist ly
3383.5423
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
574
host star teff
6689.45
inclination
87.09
insolation
35.739
mag
13.647
mass earth
37.5
name
Kepler-279 d
orbital period days
54.414
radius earth
3.1
semi major au
0.2901
sys num planets
4
sys num stars
1

About Kepler-279 d

Kepler-279 d is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 3,383.5 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.65, has an equilibrium temperature near 574 K and spans roughly 3.1 Earth radii.

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

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-279 d 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-279 d is an uncommon exoplanet

Kepler-279 d scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Sub-Neptune, 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.