Exoplanets and Star Travel

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Hypothetical planet orbiting the red giant star. A white dwarf companion fills shadows with violet light. Oil on masonite, 1973.
077-Interstellar-Probe
a giant starship is assembled high above the moon ; acylic and gouache on illustration board, 1976
081-Binary-Sun
In this pre Star Wars painting, two suns blaze in the sky of a desert world. Tidal forces distort their shapes ; gouache on illustration board, 1976
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spiral galaxies herald the dawn on an imaginary planet ; acrylic and gouache on illustration board, 1985
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Barnard's Star - 6 light years away, might serve as a dim orange sun for a family of planets

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Marching Forest - on the imaginary planet Thraxisp, a forest grows in waves toward the source of its energy, the gas giant primary on the horizon.
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Ice World 1 - a frozen planet of a red dwarf star glistens in its deceptively warm glow

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Thraxisp - a hypothetical habitable satellite of an extrasolar gas giant, developed with Larry Niven, William Hartmann, Joel Hagen, Rick Sternbach, Paul Preuss,…
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Sentinels Of Antares - pillars of salt encrust the bed of an ocean that boiled away when the planet's sun became a red giant
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Red Dwarf Rising - a red dwarf star rises behind alien towers, detail of cover of Paul J. McAuley novel 400 Billion Stars
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Extrasolar planets of Upsilon Andromeda - comparison of orbits with our own solar system ; painting by Don Dixon for Scientific American

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Many of the extrasolar planets that have been discovered are several times bigger than jupiter and orbit so near their parent stars that solar wind would blow…
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A giant planet is distorted by its rapid spin during the final stages of accretion. Tidal interactions with other planets and its parent star, as well as internal friction, will eventually cause it to lose energy and become more spherical. Artwork © 2007 Don Dixon / cosmographica.com

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Early candidate for a habitable extrasolar planet shown in orbit around its parent red dwarf star.

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If the planet is tidally locked, with the same face turned permanently toward its sun, any ocean near the subsolar point would likely simmer under a perpetual haze of steam. Weather patterns might tend to radiate from this equatorial teakettle. Digital artwork © 2007 Don Dixon / cosmographica.com

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The extrasolar planet Gliese 581c is slightly larger than earth and orbits in the habitable zone of its star. The "Twilight Zone" near the boundary between day…
479-Red-Dwarf-Seen-From-Desert-Super-Earth
479_Red_Dwarf_Seen_From_Desert_Super_Earth A red dwarf star hovers eternally on the horizon of a nearby-orbiting earthlike world. The planet, tidally locked…
480-Orbital-View-Of-Super-Earth
480_SuperEarth_from_Orbit A red dwarf emerges from eclipse behind a planet twice Earth's mass orbiting in the red dwarf's narrows habitable zone. An interior…
Deadalus Starship in flight
Deadalus Starship in flight
A crewed starship based on the British Interplanetary Society's 1970's Daedalus design fires its nuclear pulse engine in interstellar space. The engine, capable…
A habitat two miles across arrives to orbit a hypothetical earthlike planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri after a 50-year voyage. The discarded braking stage…

starship plan

A starship 10 miles long, capable of reaching the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is depicted in this illustration created for the July, 2012 issue of Astronomy Magazine. To eliminate the structural stress and high-velocity ablation of interstellar gas and dust during tthe deceleration phase, the ship is designed so no turnaroung maneuver is necessary. The central torus is the "seed" of this vessel, rotating at 1 revolution per minute to create centrifugal gravity for the travelers.

Zeta Aurigae - red supergiant star over a desolate planet. A blue companion star casts a second shadow ; gouache on illustration board ; Don Dixon, 1975
As the red giant star Antares swells to engulf its inner planets, once frozen outer worlds thaw, perhaps to serve as temporary havens for life. Oil on Masonite…
Mira is a giant variable star that swells and shrinks like a fiery heart, taking 332 days per "beat" ; gouache on illustration board, 1976

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A space telescope observes planets orbiting a distant star whose glare has been blocked by a flower-shaped screen the size of a football field. In reality, the starshade would be almost as far from the telescope as the moon is from earth. digital, copyright Don Dixon 2016.

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The High Definition Space Telescope is almost twice the size of a tennis court. By using a football-field-sized shade to block the light from distant stars, the HDST could directly observe exoplanets; digital, copyright Don Dixon 2016

A habitat two miles across arrives to orbit a hypothetical earthlike planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri after a 50-year voyage. The discarded braking stage of the giant starship drifts in the far background. The bright star below the planet is our sun, 4.3 light years away. Interior illustration for Astronomy Magazine, July 2012.