We’re thrilled to share some exciting news from our studio: we created the official artist’s concept for a major James Webb Space Telescope discovery!
On October 26, 2026, the University of Waterloo announced that an international team led by Professor Lisa Dang had found a highly reflective atmosphere around TOI-561 b, an ultra-hot lava planet that orbits its star in less than 11 hours. The planet reflects about three-quarters of the starlight that hits it, and bright silicate clouds floating above a magma ocean may be the reason. The study is published in The Astronomical Journal.
No camera can show a planet like this up close, so we worked directly with the researchers to illustrate it: a glowing, cloud-wrapped lava world beside its star, grounded in the science and made to catch the eye. The artwork, credited to CryoDragon Inc., appeared in the University of Waterloo news release and the University of Birmingham news release, and has been shared by science news sites around the world.
As a physicist-and-designer team, this is exactly the kind of project we love. We drew it, and we think it’s pretty cool!
Read more about the project and the research in our lava planet case study, or see how we can help bring your research to life with our scientific illustration services.
