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FUTURES:
Winner of Sir Arthur Clarke Award for 'Best
Written
Presentation',
2005
Extrasolar
Planets 2
Nowadays, when we speak of 'extrasolar planets' we normally refer to planets that have actually been discovered. But space artists have been painting the planets of other stars for many years. Here are a few of mine.
| I painted this version of a hypothetical planet of our closest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, for Challenge of the Stars (with Patrick Moore) in 1972. In order to have liquid water, this world would need to orbit its star in 10 days. An extra star in the constellation of Cassiopeia is our own Sun. In 2001 I was amazed (and rather honoured). . . | ) |
| . . . when reading The Light of Other Days by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter, to find a description of such a planet which matched mine almost exactly. Stephen later agreed that he had indeed been influenced by my painting! The other version, here, was painted for Visions of Space (1989), and the other two stars of Alpha Centauri, A and B, are seen at upper right. | ) |
| The only digital image on this page, this shows the beautiful Orion Nebula with a planet and its cratered satellite in the foreground, and was painted for Popular Astronomy in 2001. |
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| The star Algol (Beta Persei) was known to Arab astronomers, who called it the Demon Star. It appears to 'wink' because during its 69-hour cycle it dims to two-thirds of its normal brightness, then returns. It is now known to be an eclipsing binary, or double star, and astronomer Dr Dirk Terrell (himself an artist), who commissioned the painting, specialises in this type of body. The small, blue-white star is surrounded by a spiral of gas from the orange giant, from which it is drawn. | ) |
| 'The Ocean of Space'. Moving even farther out into space, we are on the planet of a 'stray star' orbiting a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way. A red star is setting behind us, while a blue-white companion rises on the horizon at right. (2002, from the private collection of M.C.Turner.) | ) |
| In July 2004 the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, announced the discovery of a terrestrial-type planet orbiting the star Tau Ceti. Unfortunately it is very unlikely to harbour life, because the system also contains a vast belt of dust and debris (similar to the Zodiacal Light but more extreme), which would mean that the planet is constantly bombarded, as shown here in a painting commissioned by ROE. The sky is full of comets, as well as meteors. |
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The most Earthlike exoplanet discovered to date, known as Gliese 581c,was discovered in May 2007, and Patrick Moore asked if I could provide a painting of it for the June Sky at Night programme. At right is the result (which was changed 3 days before transmission because the expert, Prof. Andrew Collier Cameron, referred to the planet being volcanic). A Saturn-sized inner planet is seen in transit on the red dwarf's face, and I have shown some sort of vegetation on the shore of an ocean. |
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