Life on Kepler 186f

I started creating this one almost immediately after I heard the (now a couple weeks old) news about a new planet discovered by the Kepler telescope, which is always finding stuff but once in a while a big deal shows up that gets the science community talking. Of the hundreds of exoplanets found by it so far, this one, given the...poetic name of Kepler 186f, is the closest match to Earth in terms of planetary size and being a safe distance from its parent star for life (assuming there's any at all) Thanks to the temperature being right for water to exist as actual water rather than just ice or steam on at least some areas.

This scene was created as a "best case scenario" since if there's one place for me to be optimistic, it's in my artwork. There's no guarantee if anything's living there at all and we won't find out whether or not there is for a long time. But it's the best candidate out of all the planets found so far.

Kepler 186f orbits around a star much smaller, cooler and dimmer than our own sun, so the habitable zone where temperature is just right is much closer in, making its "year" only 130 Earth-days long. The weaker sunlight intensity would mean a few things for the surface assuming there is life there. There could be some massive ice caps near the polar regions, as represented in one of the official artist renditions of the planet as it appears from space. Plant life would have to be pretty cold-tolerant so I went with tree types more akin to those found in boreal forests, but tried to put an alien twist on them. The "pine" trees have their needles pointing downwards underneath a woody cap at the end of each branch. This is to shield the needles from excessive snow build-up that's bound to happen at times on a planet which is likeley a cool-temperate climate even nearer the equator. The vegetation colour is mostly black, brown and dark grey rather than green, as plants try to absorb all wavelengths of light to make the most of what they can get from a dimmer sun.

The blackness of the vegetation could also help keep the area immediately around them warmer as dark colours absorb heat, as well as light. This could also be a clever evolutionary way of plants melting off left over snow quicker so they can resume growing. But snowfall could just be up to the daily weather, and not part of a regular seasonal cycle like on Earth, as Kepler 186f is likeley to not be as tilted on its axis as Earth, seasonal variations, if any - probably aren't as extreme as those on Earth. This is because the planet is pulled into line by its close distance to its sun, which tends to keep planets spinning more "upright". This close proximity to its sun also means it likely has no moons and thus no tides or night-time sources of light either. The colour, density and temperature of the atmosphere is not known, but this bronze-ish "afternoon glow" even during midday seems to be a popular candidate, so I went with that

Artwork made and copyrighted by me. Please do not use, modify or sell my artwork without my permission (sharing on blogs relating to Kepler's discoveries or astronomy in general is fine but some credibility would be nice )