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Common exoplanet 21 EP

HD 161178 b

RA 264.2874° · Dec 72.4559° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye +12
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Its star is visible to the naked eye · +12

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

  • 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 5.9 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around June — 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. ≈ 6.1 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
0.355
diameter km
179862.42
discovery facility
Okayama Astrophysical Observatory
discovery method
Radial Velocity
discovery year
2021
dist ly
349.6001
eccentricity
0.044
eq temp k
828.33
host star teff
4786
insolation
78.0069
mag
5.8838
mass earth
181.1622
name
HD 161178 b
orbital period days
279.3
radius earth
14.1
semi major au
0.85
spect
G9 III
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

About HD 161178 b

HD 161178 b is a common exoplanet. It lies about 349.6 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 5.88, has spectral type G9 III and has an equilibrium temperature near 828 K.

Lighter than Neptune — a puffed-up ball of hydrogen and helium with no surface anywhere on it to stand on.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 5.88, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, HD 161178 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 HD 161178 b is a common exoplanet

HD 161178 b scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant and Its star is visible to the naked eye — 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.