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Epic exoplanet 69 EP

WASP-178 b

RA 227.2703° · Dec -42.7050° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
69 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter +26
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star +14
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
  • Blasted by starlight +4
Total score 69

9 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Ultra-hot Jupiter · +26
  • Tidally locked · +10
  • Blasted by starlight · +4
  • Orbits a hot blue-white star · +14

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.

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

  • 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. 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 9.9 you'll want a small backyard telescope.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — that's when to go looking.

Properties

density gcc
0.37
diameter km
258801.4849
discovery facility
WASP-South
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2019
dist ly
1394.8975
eccentricity
0
eq temp k
2470
host star teff
9360
inclination
85.7
insolation
5550
mag
9.946
mass earth
527.5978
name
WASP-178 b
orbital period days
3.3448
radius earth
20.2883
semi major au
0.0558
spect
A1 IV-V
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About WASP-178 b

WASP-178 b is an epic exoplanet. It lies about 1,394.9 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 9.95, has spectral type A1 IV-V and has an equilibrium temperature near 2,470 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 9.95, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, WASP-178 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 WASP-178 b is an epic exoplanet

WASP-178 b scores 69 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Gas giant, Ultra-hot Jupiter, Tidally locked, Blasted by starlight and Orbits a hot blue-white star — 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.