X-mas Planets

Post date: Dec 09, 2012 2:1:24 AM

Caption: The 'X-mas Planets' is a collage of computer generated images of potentially habitable worlds created by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) over a section of an image of the De Mairan’s Nebula (Messier 43) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Earth is at the top right, Mars at the top center. This image was created to celebrate the first year, December 5, 2012, of the PHL's Habitable Exoplanets Catalog. The title of the picture was unintentional but after looking at the final product it reminded us of X-mas ornaments. Since this was on December that seemed an appropriate name. The image has been very popular in the web. Here is a high resolution version. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo (phl.upr.edu), ESA/Hubble, NASA.