The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently re-shared a stunning photo of a spinning neutron star surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles on its social media page.
The image is of a star named PSR B1509-58, which is about 17,000 light-years from Earth and was taken in 2009 by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
This image, at that time, had created quite a stir because several people mentioned that they saw a hand-like shape in the X-ray emission. Others saw a face in WISE’s infrared data.
“When this image from of PSR B1509-58 – a spinning neutron star surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles about 17,000 light-years from Earth – was released in 2009, it created a ton of hype because people saw a hand-like shape in the X-ray emission. Pareidolia vibes were strong. X-rays from Chandra in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green and blue. Pareidolia struck again as others reported seeing a shape of a face in WISE’s infrared data,” the caption read.
The term ‘Pareidolia’ is the tendency to find familiar objects or patterns in random objects, like seeing shapes in clouds.
The space agency tried to settle the debate once again, asking netizens to vote and settle the dispute.
The post told netizens to vote with a comment, in which a ‘raised hand’ emoji would mean they see a hand and a ‘smiley’ face emoji would mean they see a face.
What do you see?
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