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Epic exoplanet 63 EP

CT Cha b

RA 166.0375° · Dec -76.4554° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
63 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Directly imaged +16
  • Orbits beyond Neptune's distance +12
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 63

15 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Directly imaged · +16
  • Orbits beyond Neptune's distance · +12

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.

What it actually is

  • What it is made of. Too light to be solid rock and too heavy to be all gas: most likely a deep global ocean or a thick steamy envelope over a rocky core.

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 12.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — 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. ≈ 10.9 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
1.98
diameter km
314567.892
discovery facility
Paranal Observatory
discovery method
Imaging
discovery year
2007
dist ly
622.0447
eq temp k
2600
host star teff
4403
insolation
0
mag
12.335
mass earth
5403
name
CT Cha b
radius earth
24.66
semi major au
440
spect
K5e
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About CT Cha b

CT Cha b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 622 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 12.34, has spectral type K5e and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,600 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 12.34, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, CT Cha 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 CT Cha b is an epic exoplanet

CT Cha b scores 63 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Directly imaged and Orbits beyond Neptune's distance — 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.