Luis Calçada, a science visualization artist working with the European Southern Observatory, chose another hot Jupiter: Vega b.
“Just 25 light-years away, this star is central to Carl Sagan’s novel ‘Contact,'” said Mr. calcada. He said the book sparked an interest that led him to “take a college degree in astronomy. Then I built a career as a science illustrator. So this book, Carl Sagan and Vega were there at a defining moment in my life. So it was was very exciting to watch a planet being discovered around it.”
Small but fascinating
During his years on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wil Wheaton became familiar with fictional worlds and new life forms. He picked YZ Ceti b, which is slightly smaller than Earth and orbits a red dwarf 12 light-years away, making it tantalizingly close for further investigation.
“It doesn’t make sense that in a universe as vast as ours we are the only intelligent (conscious) species,” said Mr. Wheaton in an email. “So when I look at the night sky, I don’t just imagine someone else looking back. I know they are.”
He added that the evidence was unlikely to come in our lifetimes, so “our most pressing challenge as a species right now is to care for the only planet we can live on so that generations of now, in a future so far away that we cannot imagine what it will look like, our descendants can make the first contact.”
Blow up your fantasy
At only 500 million years old, Kepler-51 is one of the youngest galaxies on this list. But while still a baby in astronomical terms, the system is already home to multiple planets with puzzling properties, said Peter Gao, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.
dr. Gao said the system’s three planets were nicknamed “super puffs,” with an extremely low density reminiscent of Styrofoam or cotton candy and “challenging our understanding of how planets form and how they evolve.”
He added, “I like them because I like a good mystery, and their existence has shown that the universe is always more imaginative than we are.”
