Welcome to Pegasi 51 b, a planet orbiting a sun like star located 50 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. The planet itself has a mass half that of Jupiter and orbits 0.05 Astronomical Units from it’s parent star. To put this distance into perspective, Mercury the closets planetary body to our own sun has a distance of about 0.466 to 0.307 Astronomical Units. In other words, Pegasi 51 b is closer to it’s star than Mercury is to our own.

Orbiting within such close proximity to it’s parent star, Pegasi 51 b is being cooked at an estimated  temperature of 12,000°C. Under such torturous conditions the planet is probably being stripped of it’s hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Some theorists postulate that once the atmosphere of such a planet has been depleted all that will remain is the metallic or rocky core of the burned up gas giant.

The image above which shows Pegasi 51 b in orbit of it’s star as the thick planetary atmosphere is blasted into space was a complete Photoshop creation . For me the toughest thing about producing this concept render was trying to create a believeable looking texture for the star. I think I’ve achieved that pretty well and I’m reasonably pleased with how this one turned out. Most of all though, I hope you enjoy what I have created.

Tags: Extrasolar Planet, Pegasi 51 b, Pegasus, Photoshop

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Astro Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.