Putting a face to the name Do you ever see faces in thin | Cosmos Astronomia® 🔭
Putting a face to the name Do you ever see faces in things? That's a phenomenon called pareidolia, and it's when our brains see familiar shapes in objects or data. We often do this when we look up at the sky and see faces or animals in the clouds. And sometimes in the cosmos. Here are some of our favorite examples of pareidolia in space 1) A hill with a V-shaped collapse structure, two craters and a circular fracture pattern — possibly the remains of a buried impact crater — appear to form the face of a bear on the Mars surface. This image was captured by HiRISE aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 12, 2022. 2) NASA's Viking 1 Orbiter spacecraft photographed this region in the northern latitudes of Mars on July 25, 1976. The speckled appearance of the image is due to missing data, called bit errors, caused by problems in transmission of the photographic data from Mars to Earth. Bit errors comprise part of one of the 'eyes' and 'nostrils' on the eroded rock that resembles a human face near the center of the image. Shadows in the rock formation give the illusion of a nose and mouth. Planetary geologists attribute the origin of the formation to purely natural processes. 3) Take a look at this photo from Jan. 31. 2022, captured from the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO). Harmakhis Vallis is an approximately 800-kilometer long outflow channel located in eastern Hellas. The valley probably formed by a combination of surface collapse and flowing water. What pareidolias do you see?
