The Spitzer Space Telescope captures the image of a nebula that looks like the monster Godzilla

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope sent back to Earth a stunning image of a dust cloud thousands of light-years away.

Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, nebulae or clouds of gas and dust in outer space can sometimes resemble familiar objects or even characters from movies.

New image released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on October 25 - captures a giant nebula in the constellation Sagittarius - reminiscent of the monster king Godzilla, the fictional creature that once appeared. appeared in many Japanese and Hollywood blockbusters.

The Godzilla monster-like nebula in the constellation Sagittarius. (Photo: NASA JPL)

With a bit of imagination, you can see the star clusters and dust clouds in the upper right of the image that make up Godzilla's eyes and snout, while the prominent highlight in the lower left corner makes up the right arm. of creatures. This bright region is a "stellar nursery" called W33 about 7,800 light-years away.

When viewed in visible light, W33 is almost completely obscured by dust clouds. However, its infrared light - with wavelengths longer than what the human eye perceives - can penetrate clouds and show up prominently in Spitzer space telescope observations.

In this image, blue, cyan, green, and red are used to represent different wavelengths of infrared light; yellow and white is a combination of those wavelengths. The blue and cyan colors represent the wavelengths emitted by the stars. Dust and organic molecules called hydrocarbons are green , while red represents dust heated by stars or supernovas.

When massive stars collapse and explode into supernovae, they reshape the surrounding regions of space. This intense event also pushes matter together, leading to the birth of new stars.

The Spitzer Space Telescope has been "retired" since January 2020, but astronomers continue to mine its huge data set in search of new information about the universe.