You're listening to NASA's Curious Universe.

I'm your host, Jacob Pinter.

Imagine a movie that starts like this.

The camera pans up, and we see a spaceship. It's sailing toward

an alien planet. The planet is cobalt blue and it's gigantic, bigger than any planet in our own

solar system. It even has water vapor.

But the explorers in the spaceship know they have to be careful,

because this planet's atmosphere is basically blow-torched

with the rain of molten glass whipping in winds

of more than 5,000 miles an hour.

So the spaceship keeps flying.

And as the movie continues, we see other bizarre worlds.

There's a planet that orbits a small red star.

It's unknown if the planet has life. But if it does, that red starlight could make plants here red or purple, even black.

We also glimpse a rogue planet.

Somehow this one broke free from its star.

It roams the galaxy alone and in perpetual darkness, never

to see another sunrise. Well, here's the big plot twist. All of these planets are real. Hollywood

didn't make them up. They're called exoplanets, a whole assortment of planets beyond our solar system, orbiting far-away stars.

If you go outside and you just speak a random star, chances are that star has a planet orbiting around it.

Nestor Espinoza is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. If they have rocky planets, the atmospheres look like, you know, the Earth, or Mars, or Venus, or something else completely, we have no idea.

We just started exploring them.

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