3 NASA Exoplanet Travel Posters That Should Be On Your Wall

Earlier this week we lamented the loss of a movie that never existed, a new Alien movie from Neill Blomkamp, by gallivanting through the web in search of random memorabilia. It was a joy. The final item of that list was a faux travel poster for one planet of particular importance in the Alien universe, LV-426. Though fictional, traveling to such a planet isn’t so far from the imaginations of many, especially the imaginations of people who work at NASA, that place that’s eventually going private under the leadership of a man named Charles Bishop Weyland.

In any case, NASA’s put out it’s own wonderfully inventive travel posters of exoplanets that actually do exist, yet are still unreachable by the average tourist.

Named for the NASA telescope that discovered it, Kepler-186f will always be the first planet discovered in the “habitable zone,” that distance from its own sun that suggests the potential for liquid water on the surface. These posters are part of an ongoing series out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the California Institute of Technology. The website, dubbed Planet Quest, is devoted to the search for habitable planets. It’s fitting, then, that this theoretically reddish planet (due to the wavelengths of its sun known to be redder than our own) should have its own poster.

According to the Planet Quest website as of publication date, NASA’s confirmed the existence 1,89 exoplanets (those outside our solar system), with another 3,199 candidates (those that need further evidence for official listing). Most of this is due to the Kepler telescope, which launched into orbit around the Earth in 2009. It was designed for the specific purpose of discovering other Earth-like planets.

The other two posters are just as fun, if not as nostalgic. The only thing left, really, is actually naming these things. We’ve definitely got some more Roman Gods left in the bank.

Some might feel satisfied with a Star Wars reference for Kepler-16b. Others might remember the planet from the only Vin Diesel movie that ever mattered, Pitch Black. And no, let’s not remember the sequels.

Here at Ben’s we like to set you up with some sweet deals, and these posters are no exception. In fact, they’re the best deals ever: free. NASA’s versions of theses images are offered at staggeringly large sizes, ripe for the downloading and printing at your own convenience and customization. Maybe you should find a Kinko’s, if those still exist (they’re just FedEx’s now).

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