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Common exoplanet 21 EP

6 Lyn b

RA 97.6960° · Dec 58.1612° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye +12
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • 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 5.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site.
  • 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 December — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 3.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 278.4 thousand years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

density gcc
1.37
diameter km
170933.08
discovery facility
Okayama Astrophysical Observatory
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2008
dist ly
178.2765
eccentricity
0.042
eq temp k
371.86
host star teff
4941
insolation
3.1949
mag
5.8731
mass earth
597.8352
name
6 Lyn b
orbital period days
919.86
radius earth
13.4
semi major au
2.028
spect
K0 IV
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About 6 Lyn b

6 Lyn b is a common exoplanet. It lies about 178.3 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 5.87, has spectral type K0 IV and has an equilibrium temperature near 372 K.

Lighter than Neptune — a puffed-up ball of hydrogen and helium with no surface anywhere on it to stand on.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 5.87, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 6 Lyn 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 6 Lyn b is a common exoplanet

6 Lyn b scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant and Its star is visible to the naked eye — 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.