Probably the single coolest thing I've ever drawn: "Carta Caela," the map of the stars.

This is a map of the fifteen nearest lightyears to Earth, as understood to science in August 2016. The most recent discovery at that time was Proxima b, which is why Proxima Centauri has a planet denoted. The little dots are known planets.

The line above some of the planets denote that they lie within the "habitable zone" of their star, which is the region where water would exist in a liquid state. The presence of buried oceans in some of our gas giant moons, heated by their lunar cores and by orbital effects from the gas giants, means that this phrase "habitable zone" isn't necessarily true by its own definition, and life could take forms we aren't even aware of and not even require water. But "habitable zone" is the phrase used in astronomy, however much of a misnomer it is.

The color of the star indicates temperature, roughly according to the Harvard spectral classification system. If it has WISE in its name, it's probably a brown dwarf, because they're hard to find and therefore only found recently by the WISE survey. If the star is listed in the same column as other stars, that means it's a binary system. If the star has two capital letters followed by the name of a constellation, it's a variable star.

I got the idea to make this map by looking at some of the earliest European maps of the Americas. The very word "America" is derived from one of those early mapmakers, Amerigo Vespucci. It got me wondering if there would ever be another era when cartography would be so relevant. And then I realized, we're living in such an era, but it hasn't dawned on anyone yet.

At the cusp of the settlement of space, very few of us have any conception of what our own stellar backyard even looks like. So I did some research, and drew a map of the nearest 15 lightyears. Why 15 lightyears? Because a ship from Earth could conceivably, with technology available to us today, depart for any star on this map and reach it within a couple decades. Humanity would have to change quite a bit to have the social cohesion necessary to explore the cosmos on this scale, which is why I believe that we will not be an interstellar species before the final victory of socialism on Earth. But when we do go, we will have to have an idea where we're heading. Who knows? Maybe some of those first explorers will have a copy of this map with them when they go. After the victory of socialism, my fondest hope is to live to hear tales of their discoveries.