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Epic exoplanet 66 EP

Kepler-7 b

RA 288.5815° · Dec 41.0897° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
66 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Lava world +14
  • Puffy low-density world +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 66

12 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Puffy low-density world · +12
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Found by Kepler · +3
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8

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 13 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
0.14
diameter km
231920.4467
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2009
dist ly
3008.9913
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1630
host star teff
5933
inclination
85.161
insolation
1375.11
mag
13.008
mass earth
140.163
name
Kepler-7 b
orbital period days
4.8855
radius earth
18.181
semi major au
0.0607
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Kepler-7 b

Kepler-7 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 3,009 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.01, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,630 K and spans roughly 18.18 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 13.01, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-7 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-7 b is an epic exoplanet

Kepler-7 b scores 66 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked, Puffy low-density world, Blasted by starlight 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.