What’s cooler than the fact NASA have just discovered an entire new solar system similar to ours that could potentially host life?
These posters of it, that’s what.
If you hadn’t heard, NASA have just discovered a solar system 39 light-years away with seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star named TRAPPIST-1.
Temperatures on the planets are such that water, and therefore life, could potentially be hosted on them, and the discovery’s got a lot of people excited.
NASA have released an entire website about their new discovery, on which they’ll be posting news and updates, and have dedicated a section to this incredible artwork they’ve commissioned by Amanda J. Smith.
The posters are properly stunning – the sort of thing you’d want up on your bedroom wall.
And a they’re full of information too – many of them show us comparisons with Earth and other planets in our solar system in terms of size and how they orbit their sun.
TRAPPIST-1’s solar system is much smaller than ours, scientists reckon the closest planet’s year (the time it takes to orbit the star) is the equivalent of about one and a half days, and it’s still just 13 days for the one sixth-furthest away.
Because the solar system is so much more compact than ours, NASA scientists say that it would be possible to stand on the surface of one of the planets and have others appear in the sky even closer than the moon looks to us, which is fucking cool.
It only takes about 20,000 years to get there from Earth – get us on the next flight out of here.
