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Planet profiles

GJ 180 c

Water-Rich · 39 light-years away · Last reviewed October 14, 2026

GJ 180 c rendered in TerraForge from its measured mass, orbit and star
TerraForge's rendering of GJ 180 c, generated by our physics engine from its measured mass, size, orbit and star. An illustration of what the science suggests, not a photograph.
TerraForge classification
Water-Rich
Host star
GJ 180 (M3)
Distance
39 light-years
Orbit
24.3 days
Mass
6.4 × Earth
Radius
2.41 × Earth
Discovered
2014, radial velocity

Figures from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The classification is TerraForge’s, from its physics model.

GJ 180 c is a proposed super-Earth whose existence has been questioned. It would orbit GJ 180, a red dwarf about 39 light-years away, every 24.3 days, with a minimum mass of about 6.4 Earth masses.

It was reported in 2014 by a team led by Mikko Tuomi, which reanalysed archived measurements of 41 nearby red dwarfs from the UVES and HARPS spectrographs. They used the radial velocity method, which detects the slight back-and-forth motion a planet's gravity gives its star, and a statistical approach designed to separate weak planetary signals from noise and stellar activity. They reported eight new planet candidates, including two around GJ 180, at about 17 and 24 days.

In 2020 a team led by Fabo Feng combined the same kind of data with measurements from the Keck and Magellan telescopes. They supported the 17-day planet, GJ 180 b, and found a new one, GJ 180 d, on a 106-day orbit in the habitable zone. But they did not find the 24-day signal of GJ 180 c to be significant, and treated GJ 180 as a two-planet system. GJ 180 c remains in the NASA Exoplanet Archive, but its existence is uncertain until further measurements settle it. It has never been seen passing in front of its star, so its size is unknown.

Sources

  1. Bayesian search for low-mass planets around nearby M dwarfs. Estimates for occurrence rate based on global detectability statistics — arXiv (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)
  2. Search for Nearby Earth Analogs. II. Detection of five new planets, eight planet candidates, and confirmation of three planets around nine nearby M dwarfs — arXiv (The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series)
A banded gas giant with four moons in different colors: a yellow sulfur moon, two rust-red rock moons and a blue water moon

New: Choose What Your Moons Are Made Of 🌙

Every moon used to be grey rock, white ice or blue ocean, decided for you. Now each one has a "Made of" choice in the builder's Moons tab — silicate rock, iron, water ice, carbon, sulfur, or nitrogen and methane ice — and the physics decides what that becomes. Put water ice too close to the star and it boils off to bare rock. Put sulfur where a neighbouring moon keeps it tidally flexed and it erupts in Io's yellows. Give a Titan-sized moon nitrogen ice far from the sun and it wraps itself in haze. Hang a water moon about the mass of Earth off a giant planet in the habitable zone and it can hold air and open seas — scored for life on the same scale as a planet, with a day as long as its orbit. A tint slider nudges the colour, but only as far as that material could really go.

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