NASA Unveils ‘Galaxy of Horrors’ Exoplanet Posters for Halloween

These "horrifyingly inhospitable planets" make outer space very spooky. (Photo Credit: NASA Exoplanets / Twitter)

Beyond Earth, there is a freaky sight that will make you shudder: “sinister space.”

To celebrate Halloween, NASA recently debuted two posters that highlight terrifying exoplanets, also known as planets outside our solar system. The hilarious posters are featured in a vintage horror movie-meets-astronomical science series dubbed Galaxy of Horrors.

Galaxy of Horrors, a fun project created by artists and scientists, was produced by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The goofy series features “horrifyingly inhospitable worlds,” planet HD 189733 b and planets Poltergeist, Draugr, and Phobetor orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12.

Imagine a planet with an atmosphere filled with silicates and winds blowing at over 5,400 mph…welcome to HD 189733 b. Silicates, which are the key components in glass and sand, aren’t tranquil here. Due to speedy winds, the silicates surrounding the air may cause a “perpetual storm of flying glass,” according to NASA. This “hellscape” is located 63 light-years from Earth and definitely not suitable for humans or robots.

A trio of planets (Poltergeist, Draugr, and Phobetor), are the main attractions of poster two. The planets circle the pulsar PSR B1257+12, which is located roughly 2,000 light-years from our planet. However, PSR B1257+12 isn’t a quiet “star corpse.” It produces dual beams of intense radiation that can sometimes be spotted across the galaxy and stray radiation may attack the three planets. So sadly, this high-energy particle “hub” is uninhabitable as well.

“People are often most interested in finding exoplanets that could resemble Earth or potentially support life as we know it. But there are so many other amazing, mystifying planets out there that are completely unlike Earth and that show us the huge variety of ways planets can form and evolve,” said Thalia Rivera, an outreach specialist at JPL who led the development of the new poster series. “My favorite thing about exoplanets is how extreme they can get!”

You can read up on more bizarre worlds in the Eyes on Exoplanet web application here.

More on Geek.com:



from Geek.com https://ift.tt/2oAFPiA
via IFTTT

0 comments:

Post a Comment