← Back to dex
Epic exoplanet 54 EP

Kepler-438 b

RA 281.6457° · Dec 41.9511° · exoplanet

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
54 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • In the habitable zone +30
  • Earth-sized +16
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 54

24 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • In the habitable zone · +30
  • Earth-sized · +16
  • Found by Kepler · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Goldilocks zone. Sits where it's neither too hot nor too cold — liquid water could exist on a surface here.
  • Earth-sized. Genuinely comparable to Earth in size. Worlds in this narrow band are the ones every next-generation telescope is being pointed at.

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. Denser than Earth — a solid world of rock and iron, with no meaningful atmosphere to speak of by mass.
  • What the zone means. The habitable zone is only about temperature: it is the band where liquid water could survive on a surface. It is a promising address, not evidence of anything living.

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 15.1 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.

Properties

density gcc
5.71
diameter km
14286.944
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2015
dist ly
639.0794
eccentricity
0.03
eq temp k
288
habitable zone
yes
host star teff
3748
inclination
89.86
insolation
1.4
mag
15.104
mass earth
1.46
name
Kepler-438 b
orbital period days
35.2332
radius earth
1.12
semi major au
0.166
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About Kepler-438 b

Kepler-438 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 639.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 15.1, has an equilibrium temperature near 288 K and spans roughly 1.12 Earth radii.

Sits where it's neither too hot nor too cold — liquid water could exist on a surface here.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 15.1, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-438 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-438 b is an epic exoplanet

Kepler-438 b scores 54 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 24 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, In the habitable zone, Earth-sized 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.