The one that may be habitable. Well, here’s what it may look like on the planet’s surface! The artist is Karen Wehrstein.

The following description was posted on Daily Kos by a blogger named “Darksyde.”

In this artist’s conception courtesy of our own Karen Wehrstein (Much greater resolution here) the sun would never move as seen from the surface of a tidally locked world, but the sky is an ever-changing show greater than any on earth. Observational data and theoretical models suggest that stars like Gliese 581 might have a dynamic, granular surface and sport enormous starspots. It could be engulfed in perpetual solar storms, seen here as faint plasma arcs and visible surface flares. The star is shown as it might appear above a hypothetical waterworld’s horizon from just sunward of the terminator, distorted and dimmed through a blanket of CO2 five times thicker than our own atmosphere. With less than 7 million miles separating star and planet, Gliese’s solar wind easily plows through the planet’s (presumed) weak magnetic field and slams into the upper atmosphere to produce brilliant displays. Shimmering cascades of what on earth might be called colorful sprites, blue jets, and dazzling aurora mingle so completely with high, wispy clouds as to be virtually indistinguishable. Fat cumulous clouds hang low over the water eerily backlit by the brooding red-dwarf. One lone iceberg represents the assumed many which calve off from the great unseen ice-sheet dominating the planet’s dark side and drift slowly to their eventual destruction on global currents through a deep, planetary ocean of carbonated water. High overhead the barest hint of shorter wavelengths are scattered by the thick air, coloring the zenith a deep twilight blue. Could life evolve in such an alien environment?

Well, if there is a god or “intelligent design,” then how could such beauty be wasted on the absence of life? And why is the red dwarf “brooding?” If nobody’s there, maybe it can be developed for vacation rental space.

Insert Arkley jokes ___________________________.

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