7 Creepy worlds across the cosmos

Radioactive graveyard

Planet: Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor
(PSR 1257+12 b, c and d)

Discovered: 1992–1994

Distance from Earth: 2,300 lightyears

PSR 1257+12 b, c and d was the first confirmed exoplanet system to be discovered, but any hopes of them being habitable were well and truly dashed. They are in orbit around a pulsar – the collapsed core of a star that forms after a supernova. The dramatic stellar explosion would have stripped the planets of any atmosphere or life that may have existed upon them, and the remnant ‘corpse star’ pulsar now bathes them in intense, deadly radiation.

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