NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has conveyed a special Christmas wish to space buffs, as the space agency shared a cheery Christmas image featuring a snowman resembling impact sites stacked on an asteroid.
A special wish from NASA
"Do you want to build a snowman? Three well-placed impacts stacked this one on the surface of a giant asteroid," NASA captioned the awesome image, remembering the popular song from the Academy Award-winning movie 'Frozen'.
According to experts, the collision of this asteroid with other objects has created this impact sites on its surface, and interestingly, this time, it has aligned in such a way that it resembles the snowman. In the image, we can see three circles, the largest at the bottom and the smallest in the top.
According to NASA, this image was originally captured by Dawn Spacecraft long back in 2011. The image was captured using the clear filter on the spacecraft's framing camera, and it had a resolution of 260 meters per pixel. The Dawn Mission began in 2007, and it is now exploring the Dwarf planet, Ceres.
A strange psychological phenomenon
This is not the first time that NASA is releasing images which resemble objects similar to us, and it included smiley faces too. Earlier this week, NASA revealed that an asteroid is heading towards the earth, and it resembles a human skull.
According to experts, it is a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia which makes human mind to form a recognizable image on unrelated patterns.
Apart from the snowman, NASA along with the ESA have also revealed a stunning Nebula image for this holiday's season. The image was clicked by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 of the Hubble Space Telescope. European Space Agency unveiled the picture first, and captioned it, 'a colorful holiday ornament in space'. As the New Year and Christmas are fast nearing, we can expect many more surprise gifts from the world's leading space agency.
