Nasa ‘hexoplanets’ account starts tweeting spooky planets

Nasa is highlighting some of the naturally freaky and spooky elements of our universe during the month of October

A Nasa poster created for Halloween celebrating dark energy in the style of a vintage horror film (Nasa)

If you have a penchant for both the spooky and the celestial, then Nasa has such sights to show you: the Nasa Exoplanets Twitter account is now the Nasa “Hexoplanets” account for the Month of October, and highlighting some of the more hellish, ghoulish, and mind-bending destinations in the cosmos.

Exoplanets are alien worlds found around stars other than the Sun, and astronomers have identified more than 5,000 of them to date. The planets are incredibly varied, with some coming in at near Earth-like size and mass to superheated gas giants larger than Jupiter.

The conditions that must exist on some of these exoplanets are unbelievably weird, or intensively hostile to life — and perfect for Nasa to highlight as part of the spooky Halloween season.

Take HD 189733b for instance. A cobalt blue gas giant just slightly larger than Jupiter orbiting close to its star around 64 light years from Earth.

“This far-off blue planet may look like a friendly haven – but don’t be deceived! Weather here is deadly,” reads a free horror movie styled poster of the exoplanet available from Nasa. “The planet’s cobalt blue color comes from a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing clouds laced with glass. Howling winds send the storming glass sideways at 5,400 mph (2km/s), whipping all in a sickening spiral. It’s death by a million cuts on this slasher planet!”

A short video preview shared by the Hexoplanets Twitter account drives the point home with text crying, “Deadly, torrential rains of glass, blowing sideways!”

Then there’s the skeleton planet whose star is stripping the flesh from its bones, another gas giant known as HD 209458 b.

HD 209458 b lies 158 light years from Earth and is just slightly smaller than Jupiter. That’s a big planet to orbit its star in just 3.5 days, and that close, tight orbital path will eventually spell doom for HD 209458 b.

Nasa has gathered more short profiles of spooky spooky exoplanets on a dedicated webpage, including Hat-P-11 b, a Neptune-like planet around 123 light years from Earth, a “Frankenstein planet” with a lightning filled sky “giving any monster who needs it a charge.” YZ Ceti d, meanwhile, is a rocky planet just slightly larger than Earth orbiting a star about 12 light years away, and possess a blood red sky fit for Dracula, and Trappist-1 b is another super Earth exoplanet, one lit with the werewolf friendly light of 16 full moons.

The spooky aspects of the universe go beyond exoplanets, however, and Nasa is offering downloadable posters highlighting some of the weirder aspects of the cosmos, a “galaxy of horrors.” These posters include “Zombie Worlds” near radioactive pulsars, the hungry black hole at the center of our galaxy, a “Graveyard Galaxy” that ceased creating stars just a billion years after the big bang, and the mysterious dark energy that is driving the expansion of the universe.