Haunting image from intergalactic space gives Halloween inspiration

This may look like a picture of the fate of a post-Halloween pumpkin, but in fact, this horrifying visage is formed by one of the largest objects in our known universe.

The Perseus Galaxy Cluster is a large grouping of thousands of galaxies, located around 320 million light years away from us. Seeing the cluster in 'normal', visible light, it's 'just' a grouping of galaxies, but when you point something like NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in that direction, you see the spectacular and haunting image above.

What it shows is an immense cloud of 'intracluster' gas surrounding these galaxies, which has been heated to millions of degrees — so hot that it emits high-energy x-rays. The bright spot at the centre of the image is very likely the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the supergiant galaxy Perseus A. The dark 'eyes' and 'mouth' surrounding it are thought to be bubbles in the cloud created by intense bursts of particles from the black hole. The 'nose' isn't another bubble, though. It's actually an x-ray 'shadow' formed by a large galaxy that's falling into Perseus A.

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This is one of the reasons I love science, and astronomy in particular.

This is a simple example of pareidolia — where we see faces (amongst other things) in the randomness of nature. However, even though astronomy and astrophysics explain what we're seeing in the image and psychology explains why it looks like a skull to us, none of that diminishes the wonder of what we're seeing.

In fact, knowing that this visage is created by what is, in essence, a nebula that surrounds thousands of galaxies, and has been formed and sculpted by incredible forces from a titanic black hole, only makes it more wondrous!

(Image courtesy: A. Fabian, et al/NASA)

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