NGTS-6


NGTS-6 is a star located in the southern constellation Caelum, the chisel. It has an apparent magnitude of 14.12, making it readily visible in telescopes with an aperture of at least 203 millimeters; it can also be viewed in telescopes with an aperture between 152 and 203 mm, albeit faintly. The star is located relatively far at a distance of 1,002 light years based on parallax measurements from the Gaia spacecraft, but it is drifting closer with a heliocentric radial velocity of.
NGTS-6 is a K-type main sequence star that has 76.7% the mass of the Sun and 75.4% of the Sun's radius. However, it only radiates 25.6% of the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of, giving it an orange hue when viewed in a telescope. It is metal enriched with of the Sun's abundance of iron. Such stars are more likely to form giant planets. NGTS-6 is estimated to be 9.77 billion years old and it spins modestly with a projected rotational velocity of.

Planetary system

In 2018, a ultra-hot Jupiter was discovered orbiting the star based on transit data from the Next Generation Transit Survey. It was confirmed a year later based on doppler spectroscopy data from CORALIE and FEROS. NGTS-6b orbits extremely closely to its host star within a 21.17 hour period, making it an ultra-short period planet. The planet is 33.9% more massive than Jupiter, but it is 32.6% larger as a result of tidal heating from its close proximity. The system was included in a 2024 survey as a potential target for studying the orbital decay of exoplanets.