Imaginative Space Fans Spot Child in Wild View of the Sun
It's pareidolia at its finest.
This cropped view of an ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter image of the sun shows the area that looks like a human child.
Space pareidolia is a casual hobby of mine. Faces in Martian rocks. A giant eyeball in orbit around Saturn. A South Park character in Jupiter's storms. Pareidolia is the human tendency to see familiar objects in random shapes. A stunning new view of the sun has space fans seeing a kid in our star's tempestuous visage.
Last week, the European Space Agency released one of the finest images ever taken of the sun's disc and corona. The stunning high-resolution picture came from a series of images gathered by ESA and NASA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft in early March.
ESA invited viewers to explore the image, and some found what looks like the profile of a child in the sun's scenic swirls. A discussion kicked up on Reddit, with the original poster referring to it as an "enormous child." "I just happened to be zoomed in marveling in awe and came across this child looking flare. The details are amazing," said Reddit user nz_reprezent.
Another Redditor joked about the baby sun from Teletubbies. I think it looks a bit like Star Child from the classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This isn't the first time the sun has taken on human-like features. CNET's Jackson Ryan suggested squinting at the full version of the new ESA image to see a "creepy goblin face." NASA captured the sun with a perfect jack-o'-lantern grin in 2014.
I enjoy experiencing a tingly sense of pareidolia familiarity when viewing the wonders of the cosmos. I know there's no child dwelling in the sun, but it's fun to see our own humanity reflected in our star.