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See the original image at apod.nasa.gov

APOD: A Dangerous Sunrise on Planet Gliese 876d

apod.nasa.gov — On planet Gliese 876d, sunrises might be dangerous. Although nobody really knows what conditions are like on this close-in planet orbiting variable red dwarf star Gliese 876, the above artistic illustration gives one impression.

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  • fit4130, on 05/21/2008, -1/+36I don't know what is so "dangerous" about it, I just booked my vacation there using www.expedia.com. I got a damn good deal, too.
    • Abomonog, on 05/21/2008, -0/+5Did the hotel have a no smoking room?
    • GlassAgate, on 05/21/2008, -0/+2Don't forget your sunscreen. You don't
      want sun burn.
    • Doitdifferently, on 05/23/2008, -0/+1I hear the solar flare surfing is awesome there!
    • cobaltblue8, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0fit4130: Why your post tickled me so is beyond me. What a goof! Thanks for the giggle!!
  • maybeishould, on 05/21/2008, -2/+4The landscape reminds me of LV-426 from "Aliens". Except I don't see any Weyland-Yutani logos.
  • jamessavik, on 05/21/2008, -0/+12Dangerous because you are that close to a star without an atmosphere. That is more than enough rads to fry you like bacon.
    One of the overlooked hazards of space exploration is radiation and even a rather calm and sedate star like our sun has occassional murderous outbursts of enough different kinds of radiation to cook a buffet.
  • macosta5811, on 05/21/2008, -0/+8Hell????
  • Aeroslin, on 05/21/2008, -0/+18Sometimes, these artist renditions are pretty good. Other times, they're really awesome. This one is pretty phrackin awesome.

    The mounds of cool slag look like hunched beasts slowly crawling their way across the murderous environment.
    • cannabrain, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1dugg cause i saw the word phrack, hahaha
  • 1blogatiser, on 05/21/2008, -1/+2Awesome image
  • Manrod, on 05/21/2008, -1/+27Wow, looks like the planet from the Riddick Series.
    • Steinr, on 05/21/2008, -0/+13I was gonna say that, but decided not to admit that I actually watched a Vin Diesel Movie.
      • Steinr, on 05/21/2008, -0/+8Oops I guess I just did.

      • magiclava, on 05/21/2008, -2/+5I know what you mean, but I *did* like the Riddick series...
      • huntermaclean, on 05/21/2008, -0/+2Riddick was good, with there was more to the series besides the two movies... is there?
        • thecatcantalk, on 05/21/2008, -2/+1There's also an animated movie...haven't seen it, myself, but the three come on one disc at Hastings chain stores.

          I thought "Pitch Black" was wonderful fun...and "The Chronicles of Riddickulous" was hilarious and funny as hell, even after watching it 3 times. Granted, it wasn't intended to be funny, but it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen...and it's campy-cool like old John Carter of Mars dime novels or Boris Vallejo coffee-table books. Don't be ashamed, lol. It's OK to like stuff your college professors wouldn't admit to watching (they own the discs, too, you know).
        • Damietta, on 05/21/2008, -0/+2The animated movie is CRAZY and totally weird but pretty cool. The actors in the full length movies did the voices so it's got good continuity. Really weird creatures. Like, way weirder than the pitch black ones. Four words: glowing tentacles of death.
    • SilverSnayke, on 05/21/2008, -1/+5Welcome to Crematoria.
      And they were good movies. Stuff blowing up = good.
  • TruckStuff, on 05/21/2008, -1/+20"Gliese 876d excites the imagination partly because it is one of the few extrasolar planets known to be close to the habitable zone of its parent star."

    Yes, clearly looks habitable to me.
    • Abomonog, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1Yes, I think they got that wrong too. I thought it was the planet that hangs like a couple hundred miles from it's star. I doubt any planet so close to a habitable orbit would have temperatures high enough to melt rock, atmosphere or not.
      • staffa, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1While the planet is closer to its star then Mercury is to ours you have to remember that the Gliese is a red dwarf, it puts out way less energy then our sun.

        So while the star will appear huge in the sky, it isn't necessarily much warmer there then it is here.

        Also, it is still about 4 million miles from its star, your sense of scale on these things is several orders of magnitude off.

        To give you an idea of what the star would look like from 100 miles, take a beach ball and a pea. The star is the beach ball, the planet is a pea, now put the pea about a 1/10 of an inch from from the beach ball and pretend your a speck of dust on the pea looking up at the beach ball. That is about how big the star would appear at 100 miles.

    • huntermaclean, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1Don't discount a silicon based life form.
  • peestandingup, on 05/21/2008, -2/+9I wake up to that same scene in Florida every day.
  • Nighthawke, on 05/21/2008, -0/+10Crematoria...

    Welcome to Hell folks.

    As Toombs put it; "If I owned this place and Hell, I'd rent this place out and live in Hell."

  • reeder84, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1oohh pretttyy
  • Blakechi, on 05/21/2008, -0/+8Wallpaper for the next couple days.
  • Notyavgkat, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1I wouldn't wanna live there
  • Pandalume, on 05/21/2008, -0/+11Inga submitted this image to my User Gallery back in December and I was floored. She's submitted quite a few works to my gallery and I knew she worked in Terragen. I didn't know that Terragen was capable of producing work like this however (or else I would be using it more myself).

    I wrote her about it and asked how she accomplished the effects and she told me that what you see about is "95% Photoshop". She rendered this image in Terragen:

    http://nielsen.sp01.ab-webspace.de/images/rof_tg.j ...

    ...and did the rest in Photoshop. Very impressive. One of the best space scenes I have ever witnessed (and I've seen quite a few). Congrats to Inga for being featured on APOD!
  • Duositex, on 05/21/2008, -0/+5This image is pretty but it doesn't make any sense. If there is enough energy emitted from that start to melt stone, you certainly wouldn't be able to see a damn there thing. It'd be the brightest thing you can possibly imagine.
    • Crosshare, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1I'm glad somebody else watched Sunshine. "Icarus, please go to 3.5% filter"
    • jamessavik, on 05/21/2008, -0/+2That's not necessarily true. Some of natures most energetic radiation is completely invisible to the naked eye.
      You can easily take a lethal dose of gamma or x-rays and never see it coming.
      • Anomaly100, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1I agree- Just ask the Hulk about the consequences of gamma rays...
      • Anomaly100, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1I agree. You can ask Dr. David Banner about the consequences of gamma rays...
      • Retarius, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0Yes, James, infrared would do the job. But what is Gliese's output spectrum?
  • srodolff, on 05/21/2008, -1/+3Honey? Did you pack the sunscreen?
  • jimbo100, on 05/21/2008, -0/+0outdoor magmoor?
  • lxevolution, on 05/21/2008, -0/+3Look behind that lava flow on the right. There's the top of Vin Diesel's head glistening in the sun.

    I mean Gliese
  • blacktriangle, on 05/21/2008, -2/+3Hot geek girl who creates space art, and here is her profile. Somebody will need to mirror this.

    http://www.gatetonowhere.de/index.php?link=about&a ...
    • burstaneurysm, on 05/21/2008, -1/+3MY EYES!!!
    • h3lx, on 05/21/2008, -5/+1She's got the 'Fat' gene. look at her chin, it's just a matter of time till she porks out.
    • worldthoughts, on 05/21/2008, -1/+1Hot? Maybe if your into goth ugly girls...
  • acejam2k, on 05/21/2008, -0/+0Thats pretty cool
  • chrgrose, on 05/21/2008, -1/+3I think I see Riddick running around in that picture.
  • usingpond, on 05/21/2008, -3/+1Did anyone else read "Planet Goatse"?
  • Abomonog, on 05/21/2008, -1/+3SPF 1,000,000 anyone?
    • mythicflux, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1Any not wearing it is going to have a pretty back fscking day.
  • ldailey06, on 05/21/2008, -2/+1The habitable zone of the star is well within the orbit of mercury?
    • darthvalium, on 05/21/2008, -0/+4it is a red dwarf. so, the habitable zone would be closer to the star as it is smaller and cooler than our sun.
  • cannabrain, on 05/21/2008, -0/+4This made a ***** great wallpaper
  • colonels1020, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1aPod
  • strypersarmy, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1how did they get that camera shot? amazing!
  • leubstop, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1dont think im going to visit im all out of spa 1trillion
  • Pegritz, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1I love this planet. It shows up in damnear every single sci-fi story I've written in the past two years.
  • logotype702, on 05/21/2008, -0/+0not for me..!!!!
    VD
  • Visionz, on 05/21/2008, -0/+1Skiddish toom's, real skiddish
  • szlampy, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0I love this artwork - it's really creative - it stirs the imagination - as all great art is supposed to do.

    I do think though that the planet would simply be a big ball of flat rock, perhaps with a few molten bubbles appearing here and there as the surface heated in different places as the planet rotated around it's sun... I certainly think if the proximity of the Red Dwarf could make rock melt then over the millennia all protruding surface features would have been reduced to melted puddles of rock and merged with the surface - hence why I think it would most probably resemble a flattened ball of rock - hard, partially reflective - almost absolutely smooth from a reasonable distance.

    Apart from the possibly flawed scientific founding for the image I still can't get away from how much I love this picture... astounding work and effort... can I get one rendered in 2560x1600 please? :-)
  • Scottorion, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0That picture reminds me of a movie called "Chronicle of Riddick", where a planet is so close to it's "parent" star, it's called "crematorium"
    in our Solar System, this plane is Mercury!
    there's a phrase that goes like this: science fiction becomes science fact.
  • MaidMirawyn, on 05/23/2008, -0/+1Absolutely incredible! The artist did an excellent job; the image looks like it could be a real planet! Deadly beyond belief, but a real planet...
  • manujarch, on 05/30/2008, -0/+0Reminds me of Chronicles of Riddick.
  •  

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