Remember when you were a kid and you’d lie in the grass, gaze up in the sky, and guess who or what the cloud formations looked like? Well, it turns out NASA scientists frequently name their celestial discoveries in the same way you named clouds. See the picture of that nebula to your left? They call it the “Black Widow Nebula.” To get you one step closer to deep space, we offer you our own celestial Rorschach inkblot test.
What We See: The back of John Travolta’s head in Battlefield Earth What It Really Is: A cone nebula
What We See: The front of Night Owl’s ship from The Watchmen What It Really Is: A grazing encounter between two spiral galaxies
What We See: Pink Floyd laser show What It Really Is: A string of cosmic pearls surrounding an exploding star
What We See: A vinyl record What It Really Is: Saturn’s Rings
What We See: E.T.: The Extraterrestrial What It Really Is: Reflection nebula
What We See: A clam What It Really Is: Interacting galaxies
What We See: Lightning orb What It Really Is: Remnants of Cassiopeia A
What We See: An angel What It Really Is: Stellar snowflake cluster
What We See: A dude in a car behind us with really bright headlights What It Really Is: White dwarf star
What We See: The Blair Witch icon What It Really Is: X structure at the core of a whirlpool galaxy
What We See: Treebeard and his Ent crew from The Lord of the Rings What It Really Is: Interstellar Eggs (Newborn Stars)
What We See: A witch casting a spell What It Really Is: Colliding galaxies
What We See: A human embryo What It Really Is: The Antennae Galaxies
