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01-015 "Barnard's Star: Dwarf Despot"
2001, digital

It is just possible to scoot a world close enough to the feeble fires of the small red sun known as Barnard's Star to bask in temperatures similar to those our Earth experiences. However, doing so creates some problems, as we see in this digitally created artwork. A world like ours would circle Barnard's Star so tightly that a year would pass in just four days: the time required to make a complete orbit around this little sun. Further, the tidal interaction with the star at this proximity would force one side of the planet to be permanently aimed at the star, creating an eternal "high noon" on one hemisphere, and unbroken night on the other. Accordingly, the surface temperatures would be extreme, with conditions too hot for water on the sunlit side, and a vast ice pack on the shadowed side and conditions much colder than Antarctica.

Life would be possible only in the narrow zone near the planet's shadow line, where a low sun angle brought steady but not overpowering heat; in the artwork, notice the shallow seas that populate this region of the imaginary planet shown. Small suns impose harsh restrictions on any worlds that may circle them, an unfortunate fact since 80% of our galaxy's stars are of this type. The background stars are accurate, and somewhat altered from our constellations as we are 6 light years from Earth. Bright blue Vega is just above the apparently large disk of Barnard's Star, having moved well to the left of its Earthly spot among the stars of Lyra. At bottom center, white Altair has left Aquila the eagle and now dominates Delphinus the dolphin. Earth's sun is far out of view to the left, alongside the constellation of Orion the hunter.

Chris Butler