- sky
- dim red
Illustration computed from this world’s measured and derived values, not a photograph.
FU Tau b
FU Tau b is a confirmed gas-giant exoplanet 435 ly from Earth in the constellation Taurus, discovered in 2008 by Spitzer Space Telescope.
Imaging: photographed directly, as a faint point of light beside its star.
FU Tau b is a giant ball of gas with no solid surface to stand on; you would simply sink into ever-thicker cloud. Bathing the cloud tops in dim red light. At an estimated 2102°C (3815°F) it is hot enough to melt rock.
Catalog values (NASA Exoplanet Archive): mass 5,085 M⊕, radius 12.20 R⊕. Its catalog mass and radius imply a density of 15.4 g/cm³, denser than compressed iron, so they cannot both be right, and gravityfinder does not use FU Tau b in gravity rankings or weight calculations.
How closely this world matches Earth in size and warmth, from 0 to 1 (Earth = 1.0). Computed by gravityfinder. See every world ranked →
What these mean: surface gravity · tidal locking · equilibrium temperature · Earth similarity
If your children grew up herea playful thought experiment
There is no ground here to grow up on, only bottomless sky. A child could never stand, walk, or even fall to a surface, because there isn't one. Under crushing gravity and pressure that only climbs the deeper you go, anything built for this world would not look human at all: picture something closer to a deep-sea creature than a person, broad and buoyant, drifting through the cloud decks with no need for legs and no floor to land on.
- Body plan
- Floating, not upright
- With no surface and no fixed up or down, a skeleton built for standing would be useless; a drifting, gas-filled body would not.
- Build
- Broad and pressure-hardened
- Pressure rises without limit toward the interior, so anything alive would have to be built like a deep-sea animal, not a land one.
A playful thought experiment from this world’s gravity, not a prediction about any real person. No human has ever grown up off Earth, so no one truly knows; the direction (taller in low gravity, shorter and stockier in high) follows how growing bodies respond to weight.
Hear how a voice sounds herea computed acoustic demoEXPERIMENTAL · just for fun
Your voice would sound a thin, helium-fast squeak.
There is no surface to stand on; this is the sound at the cloud tops, where the air is mostly hydrogen and helium, the lightest gases there are. Sound races through them at about 3,467 metres per second, 10 times its Earth speed, flipping a voice into a thin, cartoon-helium squeak. The temperature behind that number is this world's computed equilibrium temperature; its real atmosphere is unknown. The demo plays the shift capped at 1.8x; the real effect would be even stronger.
A real voice sample, pitch-shifted (tempo held constant) to suggest the acoustics: a playful approximation, not a precise simulation. Voice: Lingua Libre / Vealhurl, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- !At about 2102°C (3815°F), the daytime side glows: metals run liquid and any atmosphere is being torn away.
- !There is nowhere to land: no ground, no deck, only cloud that thickens into crushing pressure.
- !Earth-similarity index 0.04: this world has almost nothing in common with our own.
A playful read of FU Tau b’s measured and computed values, not a real advisory.
How long to get there · 435 ly awayCALCULATED
No other confirmed planets here yet. New ones auto-appear as telescopes report.
Zoom out: star → system → (soon) galaxy arm, host black hole, and a real image of the host galaxy.
How far is FU Tau b from Earth?
FU Tau b lies about 435 light-years from Earth.
How long would it take to get to FU Tau b?
At the speed of NASA's Parker Solar Probe, the fastest craft ever built, the journey would take about 679,057 years.
How hot is FU Tau b?
FU Tau b's equilibrium temperature, the balance it reaches from its star's light alone before any greenhouse warming, is about 2102°C (3815°F).
Illustration generated from FU Tau b's confirmed parameters, not a photograph.