Halloween may just be one day down here on earth, but ghosts, ghouls and goblins are out there floating in space all year round.
Not literally of course, the poor things but stars and such do create some creepy shapes! So, to make the most of Halloween, we’ll be celebrating the creepier ways to dedicate a star
The monstrous hand!
A handy little picture…Like a hand reaching out of a grave, the greenish nebula is reaching out to the remnants of a dead star. It is a pulsar, the beam of energy released when a star explodes into a supernova.
Flaming Skull
Talk about a hot head…Don’t worry, you haven’t just caught a glimpse of the Ghost Rider! This is in fact an x-ray image of a cluster of galaxies in the Perseus Constellation. The flaming effect is caused by the sensors creating a visible picture of the energy given off by the galaxies.
Space Ghosts
BOO!Ghouls haunt not just the Earth it seems, but the stars as well. It might be an idea to adopt a star so it doesn’t feel so scared when ghosts are so close!
Witches Head
I’ll get you my pretty…This witch is very like any one of the Sanderson sisters, cackling out into space, probably on the hunt for some children to eat. Creepy looking it might be, but you can’t deny that it’s Wicked!
Eye of Sauron
I see you!One does not simply walk into Mordor, not with this watching you at any rate! This isn’t a nebula, but an asteroid belt surround the star Fomalhaut . Much like Tolkiens sinister Dark Lord, this satanic eye bears similar to his description: “being rimmed with fire… watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened up on a pit, a window into nothing.”
Floating skull
Alas poor Yorick!Hurtling through the solar system, this radar image of asteroid 2015 TB145 is most likely a dead comet. It’s skull like appearance is rather appropriate.
Interstellar Spider
Not so itsy bitsy…This creepy crawly spider, although seemingly spooky is nothing to have nightmares about, it is only made of interstellar gas and dust. Its leg-like formations are due to the high energy beams of dust being given off by the core of the nebula.
Zombie star (No. Really!)
Night of the living dead starThis star is a veritable zombie! It became a white dwarf when it used up all it hydrogen fuel, effectively dying as a star. But it still had a lot of gravity, just enough to gobbled up too much mass from a nearby star causing it to supernova all over again!
The Martian
Um yes David Bowie. There is life on MarsThough many scientists hope to find life on Mars, none has been found yet and this creepy mask like object turned out to just be a rock. A weird combination of shadows and the human brains propensity to see faces in everything gives a pretty cool experience. The original image was taken by NASA’s Viking Orbiter back in 1976. Many [conspiracy theorists][4] decided that this was definitive proof of life on Mars.
Jack-O’-Lanterns
HalloweenNASA recently discovered these amazing stars, 18 of them to be precise, that spin so fast that they bulge in the middle and flatten at the poles, giving them the wonderfully Halloween-y pumpkin shape. They are very powerful stars and blast x-rays into space at rates that are thousands of times more than our sun!
Many of these images are probably not what these phenomena literally look like. Under certain filters and instruments we fabricate the appearance so we can observe it better. Still it’s pretty amazing!
When it comes to naming a star or dedicating a star going for the nice memories is always pleasant times – but at time the stuff of nightmares is an awful lot more fun!
[4]: /item/weird-and-wacky-space-conspiracy-theories/ )