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Uncommon exoplanet 32 EP

Kepler-959 b

RA 292.1712° · Dec 40.8114° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Lava world +14
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Neptune-like +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Neptune-like · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • 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.

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 12.6 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.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

density gcc
1.15
diameter km
55872.156
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2016
dist ly
2634.4566
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1912
host star teff
7005
inclination
88.88
insolation
165.868
mag
12.606
mass earth
17.6
name
Kepler-959 b
orbital period days
14.8007
radius earth
4.38
semi major au
0.1633
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About Kepler-959 b

Kepler-959 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 2,634.5 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.61, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,912 K and spans roughly 4.38 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 12.61, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-959 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-959 b is an uncommon exoplanet

Kepler-959 b scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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