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Epic exoplanet 59 EP

WASP-103 b

RA 249.3149° · Dec 7.1834° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
59 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Ultra-short period +14
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 59

19 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Ultra-short period · +14
  • Blasted by starlight · +4

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.
  • A year in a day. Its entire year is over in 22.2 hours. Birthdays here would come round faster than meals.

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 12.4 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.

Properties

density gcc
0.55
diameter km
218475.4374
discovery facility
SuperWASP
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2014
dist ly
1225.1952
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
2508
host star teff
6110
inclination
86.3
insolation
6568.6932
mag
12.402
mass earth
473.547
name
WASP-103 b
orbital period days
0.9255
radius earth
17.127
semi major au
0.0198
spect
F8 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-103 b

WASP-103 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 1,225.2 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.4, has spectral type F8 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,508 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 12.4, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-103 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-103 b is an epic exoplanet

WASP-103 b scores 59 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 19 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, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Ultra-short period and Blasted by starlight — 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.