Nebula Sh2-284 looks like a smiling cat
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Looking at a detailed image of the Sh2-284 nebula 15,000 light-years from Earth, the team of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) noticed that it resembled a “smiling” cat’s face.
The phenomenon that makes one “recognize” something familiar (often just faces or animals) in mysterious and unfamiliar outlines is called pareidolia. This psychological illusion is a kind of “side effect” of the mechanism that allows the human mind to extract the maximum data from incomplete information. It is pareidolia that owes its popularity to the pseudoscientific news of ufologists who “discover” representatives of the local fauna or aliens on the Moon or Mars, mistaking relief features or unusual shadows for them.
With the help of a satellite image, astrophysicists plan to obtain information about how new stars appear.
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