Finding Patterns

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Finding Patterns

Image: Frank Kovalchek, Wikimedia Commons

One of our favorite games to play with our kids is trying to find recognizable objects in clouds as they pass by on a sunny day. One cloud might look like an elephant, the next, a pirate ship.

The phenomenon where our brains find seemingly significant patterns in images or sounds has an actual name: pareidolia. For example, we might think we see a human on the face of the Moon, a lizard on Mars (see below) or recognize words when we play a recording in reverse. Even Leonardo da Vinci – a man of many talents - suggested that artists could use pareidolia as a creative exercise for painting.

NASA's Curiosity Image of Mars

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of our favorite places to experiment with pareidolia is in images from space. Take a look at this image of the object known as B1509-58, which was released from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory back in 2009.

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane, et al.

Not surprisingly, this object was nicknamed the “Hand of God,” which quickly became a much more popular name than its slightly dull astronomical handle.

At the center of B1509 is a tiny dense spinning dead star known as a pulsar. This little dynamo is responsible for spewing energized particles that, in turn, are responsible for the “fingers” and other structures seen in this X-ray image. Even though scientists can explain this object’s shape without any references to extremities or deities, pareidolia is alive and well. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/b1509/

There have been many posts about pareidolia in astronomy images and you can read some great examples here and here.

Here we present our version of cosmic cloud watching, but with Chandra, Spitzer or Hubble images. Starting at the top, we’ve placed the strongest visual objects (to us). Towards the end of the list, you might have to get more creative to find some shapes.

Horsehead Nebula

This object is probably the most obviously named. The image of a horse's head and neck is iconic and has been published in many forms over the past 100 years since its discovery. Hubble's latest image of the Horsehead Nebula shows it in infrared light where we get to see pillars of gas and dust formed by stellar winds and radiation.

What we see: a horse's head and neck.

Image: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Circinus X-1

A system where a neutron star is in orbit around a star several times the mass of the Sun, about 20,000 light years from Earth, within our Milky Way Galaxy.

Circinus X-1

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S.Heinz et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA

What we see: A skull!

Colliding Galaxy Pair

What looks like a celestial hummingbird is really the result of a collision between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy at a whopping 326 million light- years away. The flat disk of the spiral NGC 2936 is warped into the profile of a bird by the gravitational tug of the companion NGC 2937. The object was first cataloged as a "peculiar galaxy" by Halton Arp in the 1960s. This interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 142.

Arp 142

Image: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

What we see. Definitely a penguin’s head coming out of the water.

NGC 602

The Small Magellanic Cloud - also known as the SMC - is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers a chance to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies. This image, a composite of X-ray, infrared and optical data, shows a cluster of bright young stars with masses similar to that of our Sun.

NGC 602

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What we see: Many people see a face, but we see a Pac man eating its dots.

Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone's throw - astronomically speaking - from Earth at a distance of only about 7,500 light years. Eta Carinae is about 100 times bigger than our sun and is burning about one million times brighter than our own star. Radiation and stellar winds from Eta Carinae are sculpting and destroying the surrounding nebula, shown here in this infrared image of its gas and dust.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What we see. A person, in the carved out green areas inside the nebula.

W49b

Supernova remnants—that is, the debris field left behind after the explosion—are like snowflakes: No two are ever exactly the same. W49b has evolved into an unusual shape. Its expanding shell of gas contains important elements such as sulfur and silicon, oxygen and iron. These elements, which are critical to our existence here are Earth, were created both when the star was still living and in the explosion itself.

W49b

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/L.Lopez et al.; Infrared: Palomar; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

What we see: Could be a flying bat.

On Pinterest? Pin horseheads and faces from http://www.pinterest.com/kimberlyarcand/2013-interesting-astronomy-images/

-Kim Arcand & Megan Watzke, CXC

Adapted from an earlier blog post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kimberly-k-arcand/i-spy-a-horses-head_b_45...

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NASA Photos Photography

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Wednesday, July 16, 2014