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Epic exoplanet 74 EP

Kepler-21 b

RA 287.3620° · Dec 38.7141° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 8 badges
74 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Denser than iron +18
  • Lava world +14
  • Two suns in its sky +12
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Super-Earth +8
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Blasted by starlight +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 74

4 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Super-Earth · +8
  • Lava world · +14
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Denser than iron · +18
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Found by Kepler · +3
  • 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

  • Denser than iron. It is packed tighter than solid iron — whatever it is made of, it is not ordinary rock.

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.

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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in.
  • 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 July — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
9.3
diameter km
20907.4118
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2012
dist ly
353.951
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
2015
host star teff
6305
inclination
83.2
insolation
2749
mag
8.25
mass earth
7.5
multi star system
yes
name
Kepler-21 b
orbital period days
2.7858
radius earth
1.639
semi major au
0.0434
spect
F6 IV
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
2
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About Kepler-21 b

Kepler-21 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 354 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 8.25, has spectral type F6 IV and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,015 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 8.25, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Kepler-21 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-21 b is an epic exoplanet

Kepler-21 b scores 74 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 8 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Super-Earth, Lava world, Tidally locked, Denser than iron, Blasted by starlight, Found by Kepler 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.