NASA has just released a photo captured by its Hubble Space Telescope that reveals a deep cosmic entity that looks suspiciously like a Space Invader. Not an alien race bent on human destruction, but rather a cluster of galaxies located billions of light years from Earth (dubbed “Abel 68”), observations of which bear a striking resemblance to the pixelated extraterrestrials of the classic 1970s arcade game.
Via Universe Today’s Nancy Atkinson:
Here, Abell 68, a massive cluster of galaxies, acts as a natural lens in space to brighten and magnify the light coming from very distant background galaxies. Just like a fun house mirror, lensing creates a fantasy landscape of arc-like images and mirror images of background galaxies. The foreground cluster is 2 billion light-years
away, and the lensed images come from galaxies far behind it. This image was taken in infrared light by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, and combined with near-infrared observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Weirdly, Abel 68 somehow manages to look even more sinister than any of the game’s various baddies ever did:
NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Universe Today. Tons more photos and info over at HUBBLESITE.
