The Art of Exoplanets

While astronomers have identified over 500 planets around other stars, they're all too small and distant to fill even a single pixel in our most powerful telescopes. That's why science must rely on art to help us imagine these strange new worlds.

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Even without pictures of these exoplanets, astronomers have learned many things that can be illustrated in artwork. For instance, measurements of the temperatures of many "Hot Jupiters," massive worlds orbiting very close to their stars, hint that their atmospheres may be as dark as soot, glowing only from their own heat.

While "Hot Jupiters" would be relatively dark in visible light, compared to their stars, their brightness is proportionally much greater in the infrared. Illustrating this dramatic contrast change helps explain why the infrared eye of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope plays a key role in studying exoplanets.

As our understanding evolves, so must the artwork. Astronomers found a blazing hot spot on the exoplanet Upsilon Andromedae b that at first, appeared to face towards its star. More data has revealed that the hottest area is actually strangely rotated almost 90 degrees away, near the day/night terminator.

WASP 12b is as hot as the filament in a light bulb, and would be blazing bright to our eyes. Most interestingly, if it proves to have a strongly elliptical orbit, as first thought, calculations show it would be shedding some of its outer atmosphere into a gassy disk around its star.

Computer simulations of HD 80606 b, constrained by global infrared measurements, are helping astronomers to better understand the details of how its atmosphere circulates. These computations can feed back into the artwork helping us produce more plausible illustrations.

The closest known exoplanet is 10 light years away in the Epsilon Eridani system. Excess infrared light found here by Spitzer has led astronomers to conclude it also has two asteroid belts, hinting at the possibility of other small, rocky worlds.

Perhaps the strangest known planetary system orbits the pulsar PSR B1257+12, the neutron star remnant of a supernova. Astronomers have detected three planets that either survived the explosion, or formed afterwards in this region filled with spinning magnetic fields and hostile radiation.

Until the day we can explore other star systems as thoroughly as our own, exoplanet art inspired by the real science will help fill in the gaps in our imagination.

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[ninecoffees]

Using art is good for getting children interested in science. I remember the awe inspired in me when I saw pictures such as these at the age of 8.

[truvelocity]

This is one example of why art and science are symbiotic.

[spidergeist]

I love the 3 planets orbiting the neutron star which either survived the supernova or formed after it!

[MultigrainPie]

This is so amazing. Hopefully we will be able to reach these planets one day.

[mmmodafoca]

this is all too beautiful! i love science.. to be less vague.. i love astronomy. I also appreciate how far we the human race have gone through the use of the Scientific Method and can only wonder about how far things will go in to the future. Thank you for the upload. WOO SCIENCE ROCKS!

[fegolem]

Awesome! I want to go to these places so bad.
I wish Carl Sagan's star ship from Cosmos was real and we could step in and go.

[gavinplaysbass]

Art of the Gaps! hahaha. Excellent, hopefully we can someday visit these places.

[ThaFreakymeL]

AWesome vid.! btw, the music sounds like something from Spore

[dookiecheez]

I kind of wish they would put up small annotations on awesome pictures of space stating if it's using infrared, x-ray, combination, etc...

[DrCarl]

Nice video as always! :) happy holidays!

[Martial-Mat]

Wonderful video. It's art like this has most inspired my imagination and my love of ponrdering over what might be out there.

[MrQuanu]

lets hope the day we explore these exo planets more thoroughly will be sooner than later

[Mrtingale]

@Valkes BTW. every single NASA project is done on a contract basis (both in terms of materials and working people), because they know that private corporations are much better at delivering the stuff they need. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone working for nothing during the Apollo missions (where over 11 times as many were hired in private companies and institutions than worked for NASA itself).

[Territomauvais]

@bigspliffs Could be common- neutron star systems. Great video

[gumberly]

you know the vid is good when it has 226 thumbs up and no thumbs down!

[parsonman]

Open your mind and let the beauty of the universe take you away to a place where our dreams are small and insignificant to a true that will bust fear out the door and hopefully help us ask the bigger question ! Reason and understanding are our only pilot so don't curse them but prays them for all the thing that there have give us !!!

[AncientAtheist]

We're up to 500 exoplanets now? Seems like it was only a year ago when it was 300. Sounds like many new ones have been identified in 2010.

[mamatalu]

@LechuCzechu Money is being invested in cutting-edge science but what is more important: to fund a telescope that can show us realistic pictures or some other types of research that address more immediate need of the planet? A lot of technologies initially developed for weapons has eventually come to help further humanity; for example, GPS, nuclear reactors. Don't start arguing about cleanliness of nuclear fuel. Then there are other research areas like electric vehicle development.peace

[Trinitrotoluo]

God i hope there are tons of planets that look like James camerons moon pandora!! That would be fucking AWESOME!!!

[Larvemannenz]

Astronomy will forever remind me of Mass Effect.