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Rare exoplanet 39 EP

WASP-116 b

RA 35.2158° · Dec -1.8260° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 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
Total score 39

11 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

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 12.5 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.43
diameter km
174440.4795
discovery facility
SuperWASP
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2025
dist ly
1824.0046
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1414
host star teff
6250
inclination
89.57
insolation
663
mag
12.517
mass earth
203.4102
name
WASP-116 b
orbital period days
6.6132
radius earth
13.675
semi major au
0.065
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-116 b

WASP-116 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 1,824 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.52, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,414 K and spans roughly 13.67 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 12.52, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-116 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 WASP-116 b is a rare exoplanet

WASP-116 b scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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