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  • The Atlantic

    How to Draw an Exoplanet

    A pair of illustrators turned tiny blips in data into vivid views from the TRAPPIST-1 star system.
    by Marina Koren Feb 24, 2017 5 minutes
    Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech

    Fifteen years ago, Tim Pyle was animating spaceships for Invader Zim on Nickelodeon. These days, he illustrates exoplanets orbiting stars in the Milky Way.

    This week, Pyle watched from the office he shares with Robert Hurt on the Caltech campus in Pasadena as the internet exploded over their latest artwork. NASA announced on Wednesday the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets around a star called TRAPPIST-1 nearly 40 light-years away, some of which orbit in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. Pyle and Hurt provided the illustrations that came with the news, artistic renderings of unknowable worlds that only show up in data as tiny blips.

    “It’s very gratifying to see that so many people reacted the same way that Robert and I reacted when we first heard about

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