The neighbors next door are weirder than we imagined

Space · Published 22 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: While we cannot visit them yet, our closest cosmic neighbors offer a diverse gallery of worlds. This video uses Space Engine to visualize the variety of planets orbiting within 10 lightyears of Earth.

The local neighborhood includes 10 systems within 10 lightyears of our own. These nearby worlds range from the potentially earthlike Proxima b to exotic types like brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, and temperate gas giants.

NASA and futurists have collaborated to imagine a future of exoplanet tourism, selecting eight dream destinations from over 6,000 confirmed planets. These visualizations use familiar terrestrial imagery to help humans conceptualize these bizarre, far-off realities.

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