What do you see in this pic? Is it a hand or a face?
NASA needs help in settling a debate. A few hours ago, the American space agency took to Instagram to share a picture of a spinning neutron star and asked their followers whether they saw a face or a hand in the image.
The image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows PSR B1509-58 - a spinning neutron star surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles. This image created much hype when it was released in 2009 because people saw a hand-like shape in the X-ray emission.
"Pareidolia vibes were strong," wrote NASA while talking about the hype in their Instagram post. Pareidolia is the tendency to find familiar objects or patterns in random objects. Seeing shapes in clouds is one example of pareidolia.
Describing the image further, NASA's post continues: "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."
According to NASA, pareidolia struck again as others reported seeing a shape of a face in WISE's infrared data.
What shape do you see in this image? Take a look and help NASA settle the debate:
Since being posted on Instagram, the post has racked up over 6 lakh 'likes' and more than 5,000 comments from people. People who saw a face filled the comments section with smileys, while those who saw a hand used the waving hand or thumbs up emojis.
The European Space Agency commented on NASA's post with a smiley face and a hand emoji.
"Definitely saw a face straight away," wrote one person.
"I see three faces and one hand," said another.
What do you see? Let us know using the comments section.
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