Photos: UAA astronomer helps public see what the telescopes see

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 5

The Eagle Nebula is a very luminous open cluster of stars surrounded by dust and gas. The three pillars at the center of the image, made famous in an image by the Hubble Space Telescope, are being sculpted by the intense radiation from the hot stars in the cluster.T.A. Rector and B.A. Wolpa (NRAO/AUI/NSF) WIYN Observatory  Kitt Peak, Arizona

Here's a new word for your next party: pareidolia (sounds like pear-a-doily-a).

It's the phenomenon of your brain playing tricks on you, convincing you that indeed there's a face in that cloud or on the crusty surface of your burnt toast. You probably remember the news stories about a woman seeing Christ's face on a tortilla? Same thing.

This capacity to see familiar things in everyday objects is believed to be the result of natural selection. The idea is that those with the capacity to quickly detect danger (often in the shape of faces and figures) manage to survive. This tendency is with us all the time, even when we aren't threatened.

That mouthful of a word, pareidolia, came up when I asked UAA astronomer and professor of physics Travis Rector about people's tendency to sense something spiritual, religious or God-like in his other-worldly, deeply colorful images of nebulae and galaxies from space.

"We've got a whole chapter on that," he said, referring to "Coloring the Universe," a new book about the work of photographing the cosmos. For one thing, when pareidolia happens, the commonly perceived image resonates broadly.

Read more: UAA professor 'colors the universe' to glimpse the galaxies