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Common exoplanet 18 EP

KIC 3558849 b

RA 294.9498° · Dec 38.6052° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
18 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Found by Kepler +3
Total score 18

4 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Found by Kepler · +3

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 14.3 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.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 69.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

density gcc
0.637
diameter km
88017.78
discovery facility
Kepler
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2015
dist ly
3965.0785
host star teff
6175
inclination
89.973
mag
14.32
mass earth
38.1
name
KIC 3558849 b
orbital period days
1322.3
radius earth
6.9
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1

Nearby objects

About KIC 3558849 b

KIC 3558849 b is a common exoplanet. It lies about 3,965.1 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 14.32, spans roughly 6.9 Earth radii and weighs about 38.1 Earth masses.

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 14.32, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, KIC 3558849 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 KIC 3558849 b is a common exoplanet

KIC 3558849 b scores 18 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant 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.