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Rare exoplanet 35 EP

CoRoT-4 b

RA 102.1946° · Dec -0.6728° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10

Trivia

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 13.7 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.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

density gcc
0.525
diameter km
170167.708
discovery facility
CoRoT
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2008
dist ly
2369.2363
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
1074
host star teff
6190
inclination
90
insolation
203.9517
mag
13.652
mass earth
228.83
name
CoRoT-4 b
orbital period days
9.202
radius earth
13.34
semi major au
0.09
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About CoRoT-4 b

CoRoT-4 b is a rare exoplanet. It lies about 2,369.2 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.65, has an equilibrium temperature near 1,074 K and spans roughly 13.34 Earth radii.

It orbits closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun, completing a lap in less time than Mercury takes.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 13.65, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, CoRoT-4 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 CoRoT-4 b is a rare exoplanet

CoRoT-4 b scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Hot Jupiter and Tidally locked — 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.