It's Halloween and your favorite space agency is certainly in the holiday spirit.
In the days leading up to Oct. 31, NASA has been sharing photos of stars, galaxies and nebulas that appear as "galactic ghouls," "cosmic pumpkins," and "fiery jack-o’-lanterns."
The space agency, whose name on Twitter is now "NASA, but Sp🕸️🕸️ky," captured the images through various missions, like the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope.
"👀 When we peer deep into space, we don't expect to find something staring back at us...," NASA wrote, sharing a photo of a head-on collision between two galaxies that looks like "an uncanny pair of glowing eyes."
The entire system in the photo by the Hubble telescope is named Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424). Each eye shows the core of a galaxy after it slammed into the other, and the outline consists of young blue stars, NASA said.
NASA says the photographed phenomenon is actually quite rare. Galaxies collide often, but not head on, and rarely do ring galaxies form. In about 1 to 2 billion years, the two galaxies merger will finalize, NASA said.
In another photo, NASA showed an O-type star, which is about 15 to 20 times heavier than our sun.
NASA described the star as a "ghoulish gourd."
"A recent study of the region suggests that the powerful outflow of radiation and particles from the star likely swept the surrounding dust and gas outward, creating deep gouges in this cloud, which is known as a nebula," NASA said.
The Spitzer telescope detects infrared light and captured the image.
NASA also shared an older image of the sun that looked particularly scary.
The photo showed active regions of the sun that "combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face" in 2014.
"The active regions appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy — markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona," NASA wrote.
Follow USA TODAY's Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "NASA shares spooky space photos for Halloween of 'galactic ghoul,' 'cosmic pumpkin' - USA TODAY"
Post a Comment