Feature | October 27, 2021

Dress Up Your Digital Meetings With Cool Backgrounds From NASA

By Kristen Walbolt, NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program

Ever been sucked into a black hole of a digital meeting or felt like a zombie on camera at 7 a.m.? We’ve been there! Fortunately, we’ve also been to space, so where else are you going to turn for the best backgrounds for your virtual meetings? This original NASA art also makes wonderful wallpaper perfect for desktops.

If your mind ever wanders during a video conference, then it should have a great destination. We’ve turned our popular Exoplanet Travel Bureau posters into digital backgrounds for those dreaming of an exotic vacation to worlds with double sunsets, lava seas, and nearby planets hanging like giant moons above the horizon.

Exoplanet Travel Bureau

TRAPPIST-1e

Planet hop from TRAPPIST-1e
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Kepler-186f

Where the Grass is Always Redder
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Kepler-16b

Where your shadow always has company
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HD 40307 g

Experience the Gravity of a Super-Earth
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51 Pegasi b

Greetings from your First Exoplanet
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PSO J318.5-22

Where the Nightlife Never Ends
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Perhaps, you’ve got a video meeting with the team, or the big boss you want to impress. What’s more impressive than storied NASA spacecraft like the Hubble, Spitzer, Kepler, and TESS space telescopes? If you want to look cutting-edge, then choose the largest and most complex space observatory ever built, the James Webb Space Telescope. Adding bonus cool? Each background is done in a different artistic style.

The Space Telescopes

Spitzer

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope unveiled the universe with its infrared view.
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Kepler

Kepler was NASA’s first exoplanet hunting space telescope.
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TESS

NASA’s latest exoplanet hunter, launched in 2018, has also made astounding astronomical discoveries with its almost full-sky view.
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Hubble

In space for more than 30 years, Hubble truly is NASA’s most versatile, intrepid explorer.
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James Webb

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021.
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Not every meeting is a nightmare, but if you want to embrace the dark side, then who are we to argue? But we do have roasted planets with never-ending screams, so you don’t have to!

Maybe you’re just feeling festive for Halloween? (Or maybe some days just feel like Halloween?) Our Galaxy of Horrors backgrounds are just the thing! Based on sci-fi movie posters, these are perfect for movie and horror buffs.

Galaxy of Horrors

Roasted Planet

As HD 80606 b approaches its star from an extreme, elliptical orbit, it suffers star-grazing torture that causes howling, supersonic winds and shockwave storms across the planet.
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Dark Energy

An unseen power is prowling throughout the cosmos, driving the universe to expand at a quickening rate.
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Galactic Graveyard

This chillingly haunted galaxy mysteriously stopped making stars only a few billion years after the Big Bang!
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Dark Matter

Something strange and mysterious creeps throughout the cosmos. Scientists call it dark matter.
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Gamma Ray Ghouls

In the depths of the universe, the cores of two collapsed stars violently merge to release a burst of the deadliest and most powerful form of light – gamma rays.
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Flares of Fury

This devilish young star holds planet AU Mic b captive inside a looming disk of ghostly dust and torments it with deadly blasts of X-rays and other radiation.
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Zombie Worlds

These doomed worlds were among the first to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar.
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These backgrounds are fun, but the most important thing about them is they’re based on real science. When we depict rains of glass, it’s based on observed weather patterns and atmospheric detection on the exoplanet known as HD189733b. We show lava on 55 Cancri e because we’ve done a weather map of the exoplanet and know temperatures would turn rock to liquid – and we’ve detected the chemical signature of silicates in the atmosphere so we know the ingredients for rock are present. Science drives the art!