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Entering orbit…
Habitability
9/ 100
Uninhabitable
Kepler-296 b rendered in TerraForge from its measured mass, orbit and star

Kepler-296 b

Also written Kepler-296b, Kepler 296b, Kepler 296 b

Sub-Neptune544 light years awayFound 2014
Mass
3.22 × Earth
Radius
1.61 × Earth
Gravity
1.24 g
Surface (est.)
421 K
Year
10.9 days
From Earth
545 ly
Mass
3.22 × Earth
Radius
1.61 × Earth
Gravity
1.24 g
Surface (est.)
421 K
Year
10.9 days
From Earth
545 ly

Kepler-296 system

Type
K-type (Orange)
Spectral type
M2 V
Temperature
3,740 K
Radius
0.48 ☉
Mass
0.498 ☉
Planets
5
Luminosity
0.0310 ☉

Published by the NASA Exoplanet Archive. This world’s temperature and habitability score are computed from this star’s measured luminosity, not from a stand-in for its class.

Kepler-296 c0.052 AU4.7 M⊕
Kepler-296 b0.079 AUYou are here3.2 M⊕
Kepler-296 d0.12 AU5.0 M⊕
Kepler-296 e0.17 AU3.0 M⊕
Kepler-296 f0.26 AU3.9 M⊕
Habitable zone

Star and planets drawn to scale: the star is 33 times as wide as Kepler-296 b, so only its edge is in view. Orbits spaced as in the star system view.

Sub-Neptune, likely · its density could also fit a rocky world

Kepler-296 b is the second planet out of five around Kepler-296, a pair of red dwarfs about 550 light-years away. Despite its letter, it is not the innermost: Kepler-296 c orbits closer in. Planet letters follow the order in which candidates were catalogued, not their distance from the star. Kepler-296 b crosses in front of its star every 10.9 days, and NASA's Kepler space telescope measured its radius at about 1.6 times Earth's.

Surface. No solid surface - a hydrogen-helium envelope wrapped around a rocky core (a sub-Neptune)

Sub-Neptune
Life unlikely — too hot for liquid waterLow Activity
Kepler-296 b is a sub-Neptune: a 3.2x Earth core wrapped in a deep hydrogen-helium envelope, with no solid surface to stand on.
Sub-Neptunes are the most common planets Kepler found, though our own solar system has none. Too light to be a giant, they still hold on to a thick envelope of light gas over a rocky or icy core.
Classification Criteria:
✓ Mass: 3.2x Earth (under 20x, below the giants)✓ A hydrogen-helium envelope over the core

Reading Kepler-296 b’s atmosphere

Dominant elements: O, Si, Fe, N, C, HThis is what a telescope would measure while Kepler-296 b crosses in front of its star: starlight passes through the atmosphere and spreads into a rainbow band. Each dark line marks a wavelength the atmosphere absorbed.Every element absorbs its own signature wavelengths — hydrogen always darkens the same two spots, calcium another pair, and so on. Astronomers match the lines in a real spectrum against a library of these signatures to say what an atmosphere is made of, light-years away, without ever visiting. A deeper line generally means more of that element is present.Kepler-296 b sits about 545 light-years away, found by the transit method. Most catalogued distances trace back to parallax: as Earth orbits the Sun, a nearby star appears to shift very slightly against the distant background stars, and the size of that shift gives its distance directly.
Further reading
ExoplanetsSara Seager (editor)The field's standard reference: how planets are found, how they form, and what their atmospheres are made of.The Planet FactoryElizabeth TaskerHow planets are made, and why so few of them come out like Earth.Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar PlanetsMichael Summers & James TrefilThe strange end of the catalogue — carbon worlds, molten rock, planets orbiting dead stars.The Little Book of ExoplanetsJoshua WinnHow these worlds are found, and what a measurement can honestly tell us.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases — if you buy through these links, TerraForge may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Habitability ScoreUninhabitable
9
Contributing Factors
temperature13
Extremely hot - hostile to known life forms
atmosphere18

Deep hydrogen-helium envelope with photochemical haze

Hydrogen-rich atmosphere typical of gas giants (partially stripped by slow rotation)
water15
No solid surface — any water is locked in a supercritical mantle and hot ice, not oceans
magnetic Field30
No magnetic field - vulnerable to solar radiation
geology60
Some geological activity provides slow nutrient cycling
Organic Chemistry80
Core organic elements (CHNO) present
rotation30
Very slow rotation - days and nights each last several Earth days, bringing extreme temperature swings

Physical Properties

Mass
3.22x Earth (1.92e+25 kg)
Radius
1.48x Earth (9,408 km)
This planet: 1.48× Earth radiusEarth: 1× (baseline)
Surface Gravity
1.48x Earth (14.5 m/s²)
Surface Temperature
421 K (148 °C / 298 °F)
Rotation Period
261.6 hours/day (slower than Earth)
This planet: 262 h/dayEarth: 24 h/day

Elemental Composition

How TerraForge built this world

Kepler-296 b, from the NASA Exoplanet Archive (found 2014). Measured: 3.22 Earth masses, 0.079 AU, a 3740 K K-type star. Composition inferred from a measured bulk density of 0.77x Earth's, too low for bare rock at this size, suggesting a rocky core under roughly a 0.7% hydrogen/helium envelope by mass, with a day locked to its 10.9-day year, as anything orbiting this close would be.

A dark ringed planet hanging over the horizon of a rocky moon, its rings lit by a distant sun

New: Stand on Your Moons 🌒

A planet's surface view isn't the only ground any more. Press the surface button on a planet with moons and it asks where to stand: the planet itself, or any moon still in orbit, each tagged with what it became — ocean, ice, carbon, volcanic. Every moon gets its own ground and sky from its own physics: airless rock under a black sky, ice cracked by geysers over a hidden sea, sulfur plains shaking with eruptions, or orange haze you can't see the sun through. And hanging over the horizon, there's the planet you built.

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