In true scientific detail, artist Martin Vargic has spotted hundreds of rare planets
As scary as it sounds today, before the 1990s, scientists did not know for sure that stars beyond the sun also had planets orbiting them. Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planet, or “exoplanet,” nearly 30 years ago, more than 6,000 of these distant worlds have been discovered, and thousands more have been discovered but not yet confirmed.
The growing list of exoplanets has yielded many planets that really emphasize “alien” in “alien worlds.” With superheated planets raining iron, planets with strong, glassy winds and planets destroyed by their stars spinning in their orbits like eggs, it’s no wonder exoplanets have taken over. people beyond the hallowed halls of science, inspiring. amazing and amazing works of art. Another creator fascinated by exoplanets is Martin Vargic, a Slovak scientist and author of the “Curious Cosmical Compendium.”
“I’ve been interested in astronomy since I can remember and I was always fascinated by the idea of other planets orbiting distant stars rather than anything in the planetary system,” Vargic said. the 26-year-old told Space.com. “In 2015, I made the first proposal of what would eventually become my exoplanet infographics. After publishing my first book dedicated to maps and map-inspired infographics, I I decided to do another visual book, this time focusing on the universe, astronomy and space.
The book, which Vargic said took about three years to complete, includes chapters such as “Scale of the Universe,” “Timeline of the Universe” and, in fact, the entire focus on exoplanets. The artist arranged these worlds by temperature, going up page by page from icy worlds like Neptune to burning hot gas giants called “Hot Jupiters.”
This progress led to brown “failure stars,” or objects shaped like stars, but with masses between the largest known planet and the smallest star in the literature. us. Brown dwarfs are also unable to make the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in their cores, the process that defines what a “main sequence star” is.
Related: The James Webb Space Telescope is winning a “race against time” to directly observe a small exoplanet
Images of exoplanets, such as those made by Vargic, are important because, unlike other celestial objects such as stars and nebulae, exoplanets are often too dim and far away to be seen by telescope. direct. In fact, this part of the mystery is what motivates Vargic.
“We have no way of knowing exactly what different exoplanets look like, and this makes them a rich area for innovation,” he explained. “Many of the exoplanets in the image have never been clearly presented before, existing in the human mind as a series of numbers and numbers describing their various orbital parameters and sizes, a picture that adds character , color and form as they really are, some of them may save life.”
Exploring an exoplanet zoo
Another area that sparks Vargic’s creativity is the wide variety of exoplanets compared to the rare and “safe” planets of the solar system.
“The variety and diversity of the few thousand exoplanets we already know about is remarkable. The planets in our solar system, diverse as they are, represent a just a small part of the big, broad scale of planetary scale and temperature,” he said. Even very similar exoplanets can differ in striking ways. Different star systems formed from distant nebulae of dust and gas may have different compositions, and the process of formation and evolution of planets would vary depending on the size, work and lighting. of the planets and their stars, causing some planets to be rich or poor in certain chemical elements with unusual effects.”
The scientist added that other different characteristics, such as rotation speed, will lead to differences in cloud groups of exoplanets, atmospheric currents and equatorial currents. Vargic tried to reflect these different types in his work.
“I decided to change the color tones and the clouds of some of the same planets to represent this and make the infographic different and colorful,” he explained.
Of course, with so many types of exoplanets out there, it’s only natural that exoplanet enthusiasts have a few options. And Vargic is not like that.
“One is Kepler 277b, a massive, rockier planet than Saturn with a gravity ten times that of Earth,” Vargic said. “The TRAPPIST-1 orbit is also interesting because it has many Earth-sized planets in very close orbit.”
“Also interesting is the fact that the star TRAPPIST-1 has a future lifetime of more than 10 billion years long, allowing possible life forms to exist and will grow in the future a thousand times longer than on Earth,” he said.
Regarding the artwork he has created so far, Vargic said that his favorite exoplanet to create was WASP-12 B. Located 1,400 light-years from Earth, this exoplanet is very close to its host star. so twisted into an egg- like shape.
“Hot gas continues to escape from the perpetually star-facing ‘sunward side’ of WASP-12 B, captured by its hot star. It is estimated to be fully consumed in years less than 10 million,” Vargic said. “TRES-2b was also one of my favorite planets to design because it is the least visible planet known. Probably Kepler-1652b – A large orbiting planet in the habitable zone – is a possible candidate for an ‘eye planet’ that could have one hemisphere permanently covered in ice and the other a water ocean.”
Vargic explained how his art goes beyond the outer planets, and the many other celestial bodies that capture his attention.
“I have observed and analyzed many other interesting cosmic objects in the chapter ‘Scale of the Universe’ in my book Curious Cosmical Compendium, comparing the sizes of asteroids, small planets and small stars with supermassive stars, quasars, black holes, nebulas, galaxies and constellations,” Vargic said.
The artist added that he plans to create a “Scale of the Universe” painting, which shows the size of various objects in the universe gradually increasing by orders of magnitude, from satellites and -asteroids to the entire visible universe.
“Regarding exoplanets, in the near future, I plan to continue to create more artistic visualizations of individual systems,” Vargic concluded. “I would like to complete an even larger version of the exoplanet diagram that will include every known exoplanet, but that may take several years to achieve.”
You can check out Vargic’s amazing sky pictures on his website here.
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