I am a big fan of space art. I love to see how the artistic imagination, fueled by science fact, can take us throughout the universe. One of my favorite artists is Ryan Bliss, who runs Digital Blasphemy (see link above). His work is really quite well done, and he also generously makes space available on his web page for other artists to display their work.
Ryan’s not limited to space art, so go over and check out his pages to see all the “realms” he creates in. And, if you can do so, please buy a membership from him and keep the muse alive!
Disclaimer: This is not a paid ad—I just like the guy’s work and want to encourage others to visit and support him.
We’re all pretty used to looking up in our night sky and seeing one or more of the other planets in our own solar system. We can observe them through telescopes, photograph them, and record their path across the sky over many nights.
For a long time now, we’ve been seeing reports of planets around OTHER stars, but seeing them optically (as opposed to deducing their existence by catching their influence on their parent stars by studying spectra, for example) has been difficult. At least, that was the case until the Yepun telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal facility, found a planet around a distant star.
The cool thing about this finding is, not only is it an image (as opposed to spectra), but the planetary object is orbiting a brown dwarf star! These are dim, cool stars that are difficult to observe anyway, but to find a planet around one and actually image it is an amazing feat! You can read more of the details about this finding here.
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What would such a system look like if we were to fly a spacecraft by for a look-see? Here’s an artist’s conception of it.
