Kepler's Discovery

Us space nerds would already know what this is paying hommage to yesterday's announcement of the Kepler space telescope's most recent and exciting discovery - the most potentially Earthlike of all extrasolar planets found so far.

Although the telescope has found over 1'000 other candidates for Earthlike worlds, the recently found one conforms even moreso to what it has been looking for. The planet, named "Kepler 22b" (wow, that's actually, remotely easy to remember for once ) Orbits a star very much like our own sun, only a bit smaller and dimmer, but this is compensated for by the fact it's still in the most ideal part of the "habitable zone" - where surface temperatures are mild enough for water to exist in liquid form rather than boiling steam or freezing ice, as long as there's water there, life also would be pretty much expected too.
Kepler 22b is 600 lightyears away is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, bigger than our world but still small enough to be a possible Earth-twin as very large planets are often gas giants with no definable surface, finding one this "small" is also a big deal, as they aren't as easily detected as massive planets whose size could rule out the possibility of life

This is the first time in a long time I've made something just out of impulse - yep, I'm not really sounding like a soulful "paint from the heart" artist these days. I think I over-plan stuff. But not this time, it was an enjoyable moment of creating something based off some news I heard that interested me enough to go ahead and draw it Plus I hoped I could make one of the earliest decent renditions of the world which nobody knows what it actually looks like, maybe one day when it is found out people can do comparisons, hopefully they'll get a best-case scenario like this rather than another dead rock

Artwork remains the property of my gallery and is not to be used, edited or sold without my permission Non-profit blogs regarding the planet or discoveries of exoplanets in general are free to feature this as an example provided credit is given.

Space lovers, both on dA or off may also enjoy my Solar System calendar for sale, ready for 2012