Posts Tagged ‘Extrasolar Planet’

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Dec
31
2008

Distant Moons

14 Andromedae is an orange/red K class star with a solar mass equal to 2.2 Suns that lies 248.3 light years away in the constellation of Andromeda. On July 2008 it was announced that this star had a planetary companion with a minimum mass of 4.8 Jupiter’s. Designated 14 Andromedae b, the super gas giant orbits within 0.83 astronomical units of it’s star and takes just 186 days to complete one orbital period.

Like the gas and ice giants of our own Solar System, 14 Andromedae b probably has several moons in orbit around it. If one of these satellites were similar say to the moons of Europa or Enceladus in our own Solar System then it’s plausible to think that the frozen surface may never have formed given the close proximity with which 14 Andromedae b orbits it’s star. In this instance a frozen moon could quite possibly be transformed into an ocean world where just maybe some form of primitive life could take hold. I’m no exo-planetologist and it might be a completely fictitious idea, but it does make for an interesting prospect.

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Dec
21
2008

Star Dust

Vega is a main sequence star located 25.3 light years away in the constellation of Lyra and is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. At around 386 to 511 million years old Vega is still quite a young star, but with a mass twice that of the Sun and it’s fast burning fusion process it is using fuel up at a far quicker rate. This means that Vega only has a main sequence shelf life one tenth that of our Sun which translates to a main sequence life span of around 1 billion years after which it will become a class M red giant.

One of the most intriguing things about Vega is it’s excessive emission of infrared radiation which when measured points to a large quantity of circumstellar dust in orbit around the star. Analogous to the Kupier belt in our own Solar System, this dust lies about 120 astronomical units beyond Vega and is probably the result of objects colliding with one another in a relatively young debris disk.

Perturbations in this debris disk also provide tantalizing evidence that implies the existence of a Jupiter mass planet in orbit around Vega, although one is as yet to be formally observed. Perhaps in the future an extrasolar planet can be visually observed and imaged around Vega in much the same way that extrasolar planets were seen orbiting the stars Fomalhaut and HR 8799.

The concept image above is another of my Photoshop renders that draws inspiration from the mysterious Vega ’system’. It was interesting to create something slightly different from what I have previously produced and I hope you enjoy what I have visualized as much as I enjoyed working on it.

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Dec
14
2008

Burning Up

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.

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Dec
08
2008

Next Stop HR 8799

HR8799

If you were lucky enough to take a trip to an extrasolar system you might just see a scene similar to the one shown above. Produced using both Blender 2.46 and Photoshop CS2 it shows how the outer planet of the HR 8799 system may look as viewed from the surface of a an orbiting frozen moon.

As you may be well aware HR 8799 was one of the first extrasolar systems along with Fomalhaut b to be captured by using direct imaging. Located some 129 light years away from Earth in the constellation Pegasus the planetary system around HR 8799 contains three massive planets known as HR 8799 b, c, and d as well as an outer debris disk much like the Kupier belt in our own solar system.

To create this alien scene Blender was used to generate the terrain as well as some of the cloudy atmosphere while the ringed gas giant and the smaller orbiting moon were created in Photoshop with the addition of some more cloud. Both images were then composited to produce the final render.

[Image, and post edited: 20.05.09: This has been an image that has evolved since I first rendered it using Blender. To be honest I was never very happy with the original image; it lacked depth, and felt inorganic. It was a couple of months later that I decided to refine what I had produced, and while I was reasonably happy with the results I wasn't eagerly keen on them either. This time around I decided to start completely from scratch, and work solely in Photoshop CS2. Looking at it now I feel that it has all been well worth the extra work, and effort.]

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Nov
30
2008

Planetary Projection

The recent ground breaking image that was released showing an extrasolar planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut really fired my imagination, so I thought I’d create my own artistic impression of this distant world. Unlike my previous digital creations which have all involved the use of Blender, I decided for a change that I’d try experimenting with Photoshop instead.

If your interested in getting your hands on a copy of the image above, it will be available to download as a desktop wallpaper from my upcoming darkflow project. In the meantime I hope you enjoy what I have created.

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