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Uncommon exoplanet 29 EP

HAT-P-68 b

RA 118.4832° · Dec 23.9382° · exoplanet

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Hot Jupiter +10
  • Tidally locked +10
  • Confirmed exoplanet +5
  • Gas giant +4
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Confirmed exoplanet · +5
  • Gas giant · +4
  • Hot Jupiter · +10
  • Tidally locked · +10

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

  • 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 13.8 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 January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Properties

density gcc
0.727
diameter km
153279.1115
discovery facility
HATNet
discovery method
Transit
discovery year
2020
dist ly
659.3309
eccentricity
0.041
eq temp k
1027.8
host star teff
4508
inclination
88.73
insolation
184.8
mag
13.802
mass earth
230.1089
name
HAT-P-68 b
orbital period days
2.2984
radius earth
12.016
semi major au
0.03
spect
K
sys num planets
1
sys num stars
1
tidally locked
yes
tidally locked inferred
yes

About HAT-P-68 b

HAT-P-68 b is an uncommon exoplanet. It lies about 659.3 light-years from Earth, shines at apparent magnitude 13.8, has spectral type K and has an equilibrium temperature near 1,028 K.

It orbits closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun, completing a lap in less time than Mercury takes.

How to see it

At apparent magnitude 13.8, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, HAT-P-68 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 HAT-P-68 b is an uncommon exoplanet

HAT-P-68 b scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Confirmed exoplanet, Gas giant, Hot Jupiter and Tidally locked — 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.