THE SIGHTS OF SPACE: A Voyage to Spectacular Alien Worlds

This is the NAVIS III, an imaginary ship that can take you anywhere in the Milky Way. Its maiden voyage will take you on a tour of the wildest planets we have yet discovered. Worlds of burning ice, planets hotter than stars, with clouds made of metal, zombie worlds born from the ashes of dead ones, and hundreds of billions more are waiting for us in our galaxy alone.

These worlds will give us a glimpse into how deep nature's imagination goes and create a map for future pioneers who may one day plant their flags on landscapes we can hardly imagine. As our journey to new worlds begins, we set sail for the closest alien planet, 40 trillion kilometers away. But the long road to our cosmic neighbor is paved with strange sights of its own.

Past the distant orbit of Neptune, we slip into a no man's land of icy cosmic debris that surrounds our solar system: The Kuiper belt. This massive disc of frozen material contains hundreds of millions of icy scraps, leftovers from the formation of our solar system. Out here, among the scattered bits of rock and ice, live something strange.

. . Haumea.

A tumbling dwarf planet shaped like an egg. Carrying two moons and an icy ring, this bizarre Pluto-sized world is the fastest-spinning object in our Solar system. Splashed across its surface is a mysterious red spot, possibly a scar from a recent impact.

And Haumea is not alone. There is a whole eccentric family of mini-worlds lurking out here. Dwarf planets like Makemake and Gonggong, a red-tinted mini-Pluto with a thin atmosphere of methane.

The Kuiper belt could hold as many as 200 dwarf planets, and thousands more could be floating in the space beyond. Someday, these tiny worlds may serve as a cosmic base camp for interstellar voyagers. A final outpost still bound to our Sun.

And, when we finally outgrow our home system, the one nearest to Earth will be waiting: Alpha Centauri. In this triple star system, a tiny red dwarf star known as Proxima Centauri, orbits around a pair of Sun-like stars: Alpha Centauri A and B. As we approach Proxima, the closets of the stellar trio, we are greeted by two huge dust belts that circle the star.

But further in, we come to the real gem of this system: Welcome to Proxima Centauri B, the closest exoplanet to home. With a mass almost identical to Earth's, and a density that suggests a rocky composition, this distant Earth cousin orbits right inside its star's habitable zone, giving it potential to hold liquid water. Given how near and similar it is to Earth, perhaps this will be the first outpost for mankind around another star.

Visitors can gaze up to see Proxima Centauri and its two sister suns. And on a clear night, our own Sun, a distant glimpse of home. But there is still a lot we don't know about our cosmic neighbor.

And its star is so volatile, that stellar flares could shock the planet into a lifeless state. The only way to know for sure is to go there ourselves. Missions are now being proposed that can reach this system in as little as 20 years.

Using nanoprobes powered by light sails. If humans ever touch down on Proxima Centauri B, it will become the sight of the most transformative event in human history. The moment mankind became an interstellar species.

As we push farther into space, we leave the familiar behind and come across a world beyond all human comprehension. GLIESE 436-B is about as different from Earth as you can get. Orbiting extremely close to its star, its surface is a scorching 438 °C.

On a planet this hot, you might expect to find vast seas of magma, but this Neptune-sized world is something else entirely. A world of burning ice. Its massive gravity compresses water vapor in the atmosphere into an exotic form of ice called Ice-VII.

The pressures here are so intense that the ice can withstand burning temperatures without evaporating. But the atmosphere is another story. It's been blasted into space by the star's immense heat and as the starlight pushes on the escaping gas, it's leaving behind a comet-like tail.

. . nine million miles long.

Most planets in the universe will be hostile to humans. But 39 light years away, a tiny red dwarf star is home to a potential planetary oasis. This is the TRAPPIST-1 system.

A family of seven rocky planets huddled closely around their sun. These Earth-sized worlds orbit so closely together that the whole system would fit easily inside the orbit of Mercury. The inner two are suspected to be Venus-like.

Searing hot and covered in dense clouds. And the outer planet Trappist-1H is thought to be as cold as the South pole. But four of the middle worlds orbit in the star's habitable zone, making this system a possible bonanza for life.

Trappist-1E is one of the single most promising candidates for habitability that we know of. And each of these worlds is far older than Earth, giving potential life forms here a 3 billion year head start. But this system has a catch: Each of the planets are theorized to be tidally locked with one side stuck facing their sun and the other side permanently exposed to the cold void of space.

Such temperature extremes could make it hard for life to find a foothold. But in the right conditions, one of these worlds could hold vast oceans on the sun-facing side where the star's heat is just enough for liquid water. An eyeball Earth.

Appearing like a glistening watery iris staring into space. Others could have a habitable strip of land between dark and light: The terminator line, where the temperature is just right. A haven for life between scorched earth and eternal winter.

The Trappist planets are now a prime target of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will gaze into their atmospheres in search of bio-signatures. If our descendants ever reach this system, they will look up to see the sibling planets decorating the sky. Each clinging to the heat of their dim red star, like campers around a fire.

Further beyond, 64 light years away, lies a world that looks deceptively peaceful. A world where pasty white clouds float above lush deep shades of blue. But as we get closer, this gas giant is anything but friendly.

The winds here are the fastest know in space. 25 times faster than the strongest recorded hurricanes. And those cool blues you saw from space, they're shards of silicate particles as sharp as glass and they're being blown sideways across the world with you at 7 times the speed of sound.

if that wasn't enough to kill you then the extreme heat would do the trick. The atmosphere here is so hot that it can melt solid gold. And that intense heat is causing it to evaporate at a rate of up to 1.

3 billion lbs a second. On this world from hell, even the sky wants to escape. As we journey the dark cosmic highways, 400 light years from Earth, out of the darkness comes a truly brilliant sight: This newborn planet might look familiar at first.

But compared to Saturn, this massive world is the true Lord of the Rings: Its ring system is 200 times larger, nearly 120 million kilometers wide, almost the distance from the Earth to the Sun. If Saturn's rings were this massive, they would be easily visible at night and appear far larger than the Moon. Researchers suspect that within a gap in the rings, there lies a huge moon, bigger than Mars, where the views would resemble something from an acid trip.

Over time, the surrounding rings will condense to form a whole family of moons. Possibly hundreds of them. But for now, they offer a sight unlike any we've ever seen.

Evidence that our home Solar system has not prepared us, for how varied and dazzling others systems can be. By some estimates, nearly half of all Sun-like star systems contain more than one sun. Implying billions of worlds that are home to poetic twin sunsets: Worlds that orbit not just two or three but even four stars.

Lands where your body casts multiple shadows. And you can gaze up at sunsets and sunrises at the same time. This is an actual image of a three-star system in the Orion Nebula, revealing massive rings of gas and dust whirling around a triplet of newborn stars, and within this twisted swirl of debris, there is evidence of a hidden planet, carving out a gap in the gas and dust, the first planet known to orbit three stars at once.

And then there are worlds that seem more like stars themselves than planets. This huge scorching gas giant is tidally locked to its star with the day side that reaches a blistering 3000 degrees Celcius, hotter than the surface of some stars. In the extreme heat, heavy metals are lofted into the atmosphere from the planet's interior.

As violent winds blow these metals to the night-facing side, something incredible happens: in this cooler atmosphere, particles of iron, magnesium, and other heavy elements condense into clouds made of metal. Huge metallic dust storms could rage from one hemisphere to the other, unleashing a torrential rain of liquid gemstones. And this isn't the only planet of riches out there.

21 light-years from Earth, this supermassive rocky planet could be the ultimate piece of cosmic bling. High concentrations of aluminum and calcium pressurize under its extreme atmosphere, possibly forming vast deposits of rubies and sapphires. And scientists believe, there could even be planets of pure diamond out here.

With its equal ratio of carbon to oxygen, WASP-12B could potentially hold a diamond core. But even if it does you'd never see it from space. It's shrouded in dark clouds of methane and carbon monoxide that trap 94% of light, making it darker than black coal.

And its proximity to its star is causing gravity to stretch the planet into the shape of an egg. But this diamond space egg has a death sentence: Its star's intense gravity is pulling it towards a fiery extinction, giving it only three million years to live. But for some worlds, death is not the end of the story: When massive stars go supernova, the ensuing blast wipes out any planets in the vicinity.

But the death of one world can sometimes lead to the birth of another. In a wake of this explosion, certain stars collapse into rapidly spinning cores, called pulsars, sucking up huge amounts of stellar debris. But what's left on the outer edge can cool and condense, until finally, a new world is formed: A zombie planet, build from the ashes of the dead.

Worlds like this are exceedingly rare. But 2300 lights years away, this billion-year-old pulsar is the keeper of not one but three potential zombie planets. The closest in is Drugr.

A tiny rocky world, smaller than Mercury, likely stripped bare from intense X-ray radiation. Then, we come to the first two exoplanets ever discovered, a pair of zombie super-Earths known as Poltergeist and Phobetor, Each more than triple the mass of the Earth. Soaked in the strobing of light of their dead stars, the view from these planets would be utterly alien.

Charged particles from the pulsar would rain down on the surface, which could light up the night skies with brilliant auroras. Drnched in deadly x-rays with no living star for warmth, it may seem impossible for worlds like this to sustain life. But on planets with extremely thick atmospheres, those X-rays could convert into heat, supporting liquid water on the surface and maybe even life itself.

thriving on a zombie planet, circling the spinning corpse of an exploded star. As we reach the farthest point of our journey, over 2000 light years from Earth, we have still only scratched the surface of what's out there. 700 quadrillion other worlds are still waiting.

Planets that are drenched in light from the blazing center of the galaxy. Worlds circling the rims of supermassive black holes, giant water planets with oceans that reach thousands of kilometers deep, to visit these far-off lands is a dream only our descendants can realize. If they ever set foot on alien soil and feel the heat of new suns, they will remember us, as the first generation to know these worlds, to study their formation and their nature, and to dream of one day, calling some of them, Home.

and subtitles by BYROXI5000, french benevolat traductor.