Eyes on Exoplanets
Eyes on Exoplanets is an app that will fly you to any planet you wish – as long as it’s far beyond our solar system.
The app is powered by NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, the official database used by professional astronomers. The database is full of information about exoplanets (a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system) and their solar systems. The app will be updated daily as new information about the planets is acquired.
With this information at their fingertips, users will get to see scientifically accurate 3D renderings of the exoplanet, find out how long it would take to travel to the planet (with travel times broken down by means of travel such as car, plane, bullet train, or space ship), and see information about whether or not the planet might be inhabitable.
To go along with the app, NASA has created five stunning travel posters with interesting facts about some of the planets in question.
NASA is boldly going where no man has gone before – with travel posters
NASA partnered with Seattle-based design firm Invisible Creature to create a series of posters that will go into a 2016 calendar to be given to NASA staff members. The posters are also up for sale from the Invisible Creature website.
Check out these posters and let’s get excited about space travel!
The Artwork
While there is much debate over which exoplanet discovery is considered the “first,” one stands out from the rest. In 1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi b, forever changing the way we see the universe and our place in it. The exoplanet is about half the mass of Jupiter, with a seemingly impossible, star-hugging orbit of only 4.2 Earth days. Not only was it the first planet confirmed to orbit a sun-like star, it also ushered in a whole new class of planets called Hot Jupiters: hot, massive planets orbiting closer to their stars than Mercury. Today, powerful observatories like NASA’s Kepler space telescope will continue the hunt of distant planets.
Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between “Super-Earth” and “mini-Neptune” and scientists aren’t sure if it has a rocky surface or one that’s buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice. One thing is certain though: at eight times the Earth’s mass, its gravitational pull is much, much stronger.
Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially ‘habitable zone’ around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star’s red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that’s very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, NASA’s planet-hunting telescope.
Discovered in October 2013 using direct imaging, PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of planets called rogue, or free-floating, planets. Wandering alone in the galaxy, they do not orbit a parent star. Not much is known about how these planets come to exist, but scientists theorize that they may be either failed stars or planets ejected from very young systems after an encounter with another planet. These rogue planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation. Once they cool down, they will be dancing in the dark.
Like Luke Skywalker’s planet “Tatooine” in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet, Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like Saturn. Prospects for life on this unusual world aren’t good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery indicates that the movie’s iconic double-sunset is anything but science fiction.
Really beautiful, warmed my heart.