Is the central source stretching out in 3 or 4 directions?
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For all the world it looks like that central object is extending out in at least 3 directions, esp. to the contours/IR in the lower LH corner. Does the central IR source have jets stretching out in 3 or 4 different directions? Is the central emission just influencing the phenomenon in the lower LH corner (it doesn't look like jets...)? It's beautiful, it's stunning, but what's going on?
Thx!
Posted
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by
JeanTate
in response to honeyeyedchild's comment.
In this case, I think it's the human mind's superb pattern recognition system drawing a false conclusion! 😮
That magnificent system evolved to assist in our survival (find food, avoid danger; that sort of thing), and for good reason it errs on the side of seeing patterns that don't, in fact, exist ... better to be scared of some peculiar pattern of ordinary shadows than to not recognize a leopard waiting to pounce!
However, we did not evolve to 'read' highly artificial images such as we get to classify in RGZ; our eyes cannot 'see' infrared, nor radio; our pre-telescope understanding of what's going on in the heavens was severly limited (by today's standards). And the universe is truly vast, far beyond any intuitive grasp by mere humans. Among other things, that means strange coincidences are not unlikely, they are certainties.
One way to judge whether there is something 'real' going on in images like this one is to look at that part of the sky in more detail. And here we have the chance to do so, in 'the optical' (roughly, sorta what the sky would look like, if our eyes were much bigger and more sensitive). Here is ~the same field, as seen by SDSS:
Hope this helps. Happy hunting! 😃
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