Yes, NASA dabbles in some tongue-in-cheek PR too! A few days ago, they released three retro-styled posters that hark back to the vintage times of traveling to wondrous places. All of the three posters in this case relate to three alien planets – Kepler-16b, Kepler-186f and HD 40307g; all of which were discovered by the refurbished Kepler space observatory.
The first of these art-deco style posters is about Kepler-16b, which has a Saturn-like mass, and it orbits around not one but two stars (in around 229 Earth-days). This is in fact referenced by the poster’s slogan “where your shadow always has company”.
The second ‘sightseeing’ endeavor involves the Kepler-186f, with the accompanying tagline of “where the grass is always redder on the other side”. In that regard, scientists actually do think that this Earth-sized planet can support plant life, since water can exist upon its surface in a liquid state. Interestingly, the light shed by its cooler star would probably pertain to a reddish hue, which is in contrast with the greenery and blue oceans upon the Earth’s surface.
And lastly, the third poster touts the ‘Super Earth’ of HD 40307g, with its gravitational pull expected to be a whopping eight-times to that of our planet (which is directly proportional to HD 40307g’s 8-times higher mass). However, astronomers still know very little about the alien planet’s surface texture hidden beneath thick layers of gas and ice.
Source: NASA / Via: LaughingSquid