Distant worlds

American artist Walter Myers (Walter Myers) was born in 1958, a child is interested in astronomy. Through his paintings, drawn in accordance with scientific data, we can admire the landscapes of other planets. Here is a selection of works Myers with his informative comments.

Jupiter - the view from Europe's satellites

Jupiter Crescent varies slowly over the horizon of his companion - Europe. The eccentricity of its orbit is constantly exposed to disturbances due to the orbital resonance with Io, which is now just held against the backdrop of Jupiter. Tidal deformation causes the surface of Europe covered with deep cracks and provides a warm companion, stimulating subterranean geologic processes, allowing you to stay subsurface ocean liquid.

Sunrise on Mars

Sunrise on the bottom of one of the canyons in the Labyrinth of Night Tharsis on Mars. The reddish color of the sky gives dissipated in the atmosphere dust consisting predominantly of "rust" - iron oxides (if a real photographs taken rovers, apply automatic color correction in the image editor, the sky in them will be "normal" blue stones surface, though. at the same time acquire a greenish tint, which is not true, so right after all the way here). This dust scatters and refracts light in part, as a result of the Sun there is a blue halo in the sky.

Dawn on Io

Dawn on Io, a satellite of Jupiter. Surface, similar to the snow, the foreground includes sulfur dioxide crystals ejected onto the surface of geysers similar vidneyuscheysya Now for near horizon. There is no atmosphere, creating turbulence, so geyser has the correct shape.

Sunrise on Mars

Solar Eclipse Callisto

This is the most distant of the four large moons of Jupiter. It is smaller than Ganymede, but more than Io and Europa. Callisto also covered with a crust of ice mixed with rocks under which contains ocean water (nearer to the outskirts of the solar system, the greater the proportion of oxygen in the substance of planets, and, therefore, water), but the tidal interaction of the satellite is almost not plagued, however superficial ice may reach thicknesses hundred km, and vulkanizm absent, so that the presence of life here is unlikely. In this photo we look at Jupiter from a position of about 5 ° from the north pole of Callisto. The sun will soon be out of the right edge of Jupiter; and its rays are refracted by the atmosphere of the giant planet. Blue dot to the left of Jupiter - is the Earth, the yellowish right - Venus and right and above it - Mercury. Whitish band Jupiter - not the Milky Way, and the disk of gas and dust in the plane of the ecliptic the inner solar system, known as a terrestrial observer "zodiacal light"

Sunrise on Mercury

disk of the sun with Mercury looks three times more than the Earth, and many times brighter, especially in an airless sky.

Given the slowness of the rotation of the planet, to this for a few weeks with the same point could be seen slowly crawling out of the horizon the solar corona.

Triton

Full Neptune in the sky - the only source of light for the night side of Triton. A thin line across the disk of Neptune - is his ring, seen edge-on and dark circle - the shadow of the Triton. The opposite edge of the depression in the middle ground is about 15 kilometers.

sunrise on Triton

"Summer" on Pluto

In spite of its small size and great distance from the Sun, Pluto has an atmosphere of times. This happens when Pluto, moving along its elongated orbit, approaches the Sun closer to Neptune. During this period, approximately twenty of the methane-nitrogen evaporates ice surface, enveloping the planet atmosphere density rival Mars. February 11, 1999, Pluto has once again crossed the orbit of Neptune and began again on him from the sun (and would now be the ninth, the farthest from the Sun, the planet, if in 2006 with the adoption of the definition of "planet" was not "demoted") . Now to 2231. It will usually (though largest) the frozen planetoid Kuiper zones - darker coated armor frozen gases places has acquired a reddish hue on the interaction of gamma rays with an open space.

Dangerous sunrise on Gliese 876D

Risk in itself can carry sunrises on the planet Gliese 876d. Although, in fact, none of mankind does not know the actual conditions on the planet. It rotates at a very close distance from the star of the variable - a red dwarf star Gliese 876. This image shows how they imagined the artist. The mass of this planet is several times the mass of the Earth, and its orbit size smaller than the orbit of Mercury. Gliese 876d rotates so slowly that conditions on the planet day and night are very different. You can avoid the assumption that Gliese 876d can be a strong volcanic activity, caused by gravitational tides that deformiruyuet and warms the planet, and she is amplified in the daytime.

ship

Ship sentient beings under the green sky the unknown planet

Gliese 581

Gliese 581, aka Wolf 562 - class red dwarf star located in the constellation of Libra, 20, 4 St. years from Earth The main attraction of its system - the first open scientists exoplanet Gliese 581C within the "habitable zone" - that is, not too close and not too far from the star that its surface might be liquid water. The surface temperature of the planet is from -3 ° C to + 40 ° C, which means that it can be manned. The gravity on the surface of one and a half times higher than the earth, and "year" is only 13 days.

As a result of such a close location relative to the star, Gliese 581C always turned to it on one side, so the change of day and night is not there (although light can be raised and lowered relative to the horizon due to the eccentricity of the orbit and planetary axis tilt). Gliese 581 star half Sun in diameter and a hundred times fainter.

planetarium

Planetarium or rogue planet called planet that do not revolve around the stars and drift freely in the interstellar space.

Some of them are formed, like stars, the gravitational compression of gas and dust clouds, others emerged, like ordinary planets in the solar systems, but have been discarded in interstellar space due to disturbances from neighboring planets. Planetarium should be fairly common in the galaxy, but they are almost impossible to find, and most of the wandering planets will most likely never be opened. If Planetarium weight is 0, 6-0, 8 and up from the earth, it is capable of retaining an atmosphere which will stop the heat generated by the subsoil, and the temperature and pressure on the surface may be acceptable even for life. On their surface reigns eternal night.

Globular cluster, which travels along the edge of the planetarium, contains about 50 000 stars and is located not far from our own galaxy. Perhaps, in his heart, as well as in the nuclei of many galaxies lurks a supermassive black hole. Globular clusters typically contain very old stars and the planetarium, probably too much older than the Earth. When the life of a star like our sun nears the end, it will expand to more than 200 times its original diameter, becoming a red giant and destroying the system the inner planets

Then, for a few tens of thousands of years, the star occasionally throws off its outer layers into space, sometimes with the formation of concentric shells, leaving behind a small, very hot core, which cools and shrinks to become a white dwarf. Here we see the beginning of compression - star throws off the first of their gaseous envelopes. This ghost will gradually expand the scope, coming ultimately far beyond the orbit of this planet - "Pluto" this star system, almost all of its history - tens of billions of years - far carried through on its outskirts in a dark dead ball, covered with a layer of frozen gases. The last hundred million years, it is bathed in streams of light and heat, thawed nitrogen-methane atmosphere ice formed, and on the surface of the flow of this river water. But soon - in astronomical terms - this planet is once again plunged into darkness and cold - now forever.

The gloomy landscape

Landscape unnamed planet, drifting along with his star system in the depths of a dense absorbing nebulae - huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust

The light from other stars is hidden, while the solar wind from the central luminary system "blows" the material of the nebula, creating a star bubble with respect to the free space, which can be seen in the sky as a light spot necessary, within about 160 million kilometers -. It is a tiny tear in dark cloud, the size of which are measured in light years. Planet whose surface we see was once geologically active world with a substantial atmosphere - as evidenced by the lack of impact craters - but after immersion into the nebula amount of sunlight and heat reaching the surface decreased so that a large part of the atmosphere is simply frozen and of snow. A life that once thrived here, had disappeared.

The sun in the sky

The star in the sky of this planet marsopodobnoy - this Teide 1.

Discovered in 1995, the Teide 1 is one of the brown dwarfs - stars tiny mass of several tens of times smaller than the Sun - and is four hundred light-years from Earth in the Pleiades star cluster. Teide 1 has a mass about 55 times greater than that of Jupiter, and is considered quite large for a brown dwarf. and, therefore, hot enough to maintain the synthesis of lithium in its interior, but it is unable to start the fusion process of hydrogen nuclei as our sun. There is this substars probably only about 120 million years (compared to 4.5 billion years of existence of the Sun), and burns at a temperature of 2200 ° C - not half as hot as the sun. Planet with which we look at Teide 1, located at a distance from it about 6, 5 million kilometers. Here there is an atmosphere and even clouds, but she is too young for life.

Light looks alarmingly large in the sky, but in fact it is only the diameter is twice larger than that of Jupiter. All brown dwarfs the size comparable to Jupiter - the more massive are simply more dense. As for life on this planet, then it is most likely just does not have time to develop in a short period of active life of a star - she meted out for about three hundred million years, and then another billion years, it will slowly dotlevat at a temperature of less than a thousand degrees and has stops considered star.

Spring on the Phoenix

This world is similar to Earth ... but he deserted. Perhaps, here, for some reason, did not have life, in spite of the favorable conditions, maybe life is just not had time to produce advanced forms and get to dry land.

The frozen world of

Some Earth-like planets may be too far away from the star, so on the surface to maintain an acceptable temperature for life. "Too far" in this case - a relative term, everything depends on the composition of the atmosphere, and the presence or absence of the greenhouse effect. In the history of our Earth it was a period (850-630 million years ago), when all it is a continuous ice desert from pole to pole and the equator was as cold as in modern Antarctica. By the beginning of this global glaciation on Earth already there unicellular life, and if volcanoes millions of years is not saturated with the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and methane so that the ice began to melt, life on Earth still would be represented by bacteria, yutyaschimisya on rocky outcrops and in areas of volcanic activity.

Ambler

Alien world with a geology. Education reminiscent outcrops of layered ice. Judging by the lack of sediment in the lowlands, they are formed by melting rather than weathering.