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Epic exoplanet 65 EP

WASP-168 b

RA 96.7446° · Dec -46.8214° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
65 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Lava world +14
  • Puffy low-density world +12
  • Two suns in its sky +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Orbits a Sun-like star +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 65

13 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Puffy low-density world · +12
  • Orbits a Sun-like star · +8
  • Two suns in its sky · +12

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 12.1 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.16
diameter km
214476.3687
discovery facility
SuperWASP-South
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2018
dist ly
991.3218
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1340
host star teff
6000
inclination
84.4
insolation
278.886
mag
12.124
mass earth
133.4886
multi star system
yes
name
WASP-168 b
orbital period days
4.1537
radius earth
16.8135
semi major au
0.0519
spect
F9 V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
2
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-168 b

WASP-168 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 991.3 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.12, has spectral type F9 V and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,340 K.

Its surface is almost certainly an ocean of molten rock, kept liquid by the star it hugs.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 12.12, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-168 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-168 b is an epic exoplanet

WASP-168 b scores 65 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Lava world, Tidally locked, Puffy low-density world, Orbits a Sun-like 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.