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Epic exoplanet 75 EP

KELT-9 b

RA 307.8599° · Dec 39.9389° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
75 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star +14
  • Two suns in its sky +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 75

3 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star · +14
  • Two suns in its sky · +12

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Ultra-hot Jupiter. So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

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 7.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • 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
0.491
diameter km
276817.0233
discovery facility
KELT-North
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2017
dist ly
666.8422
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
3921
host star teff
9270
inclination
86.79
insolation
44900
mag
7.55
mass earth
915.3458
multi star system
yes
name
KELT-9 b
orbital period days
1.4811
radius earth
21.7006
semi major au
0.0337
spect
A
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
2
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About KELT-9 b

KELT-9 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 666.8 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 7.55, has spectral type A and has an equilibrium temperature near 3,921 K.

So hot that iron vaporises on the dayside, blows around to the night side and rains back down as molten metal.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 7.55, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, KELT-9 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 KELT-9 b is an epic exoplanet

KELT-9 b scores 75 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight, Orbits a hot blue-white star and Two suns in its sky — 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.