Skip to main content

Spitzer Space Telescope spots ‘rampaging space monster’

Just in time for Halloween, NASA astronomers have spotted a rampaging space monster deep out in the distant cosmos. But it won’t be coming to devour us any time soon, as the monster is just an outline in the shape of Godzilla, seen in an image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope imaged this cloud of gas and dust. The colors represent different wavelengths of infrared light and can reveal such features as places where radiation from stars had heated the surrounding material. Any resemblance to Godzilla is purely imaginary.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope imaged this cloud of gas and dust. The colors represent different wavelengths of infrared light and can reveal such features as places where radiation from stars had heated the surrounding material.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope imaged this cloud of gas and dust. The colors represent different wavelengths of infrared light and can reveal such features as places where radiation from stars had heated the surrounding material. Any resemblance to Godzilla is purely imaginary. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Spitzer, which was retired last year, looked out at the universe in the infrared wavelength in order to peer through clouds of dust and see the complex shapes of nebulae and galaxies which would be hidden in the visible light wavelength. In one such nebula, Caltech astronomer Robert Hurt spotted Godzilla.

Recommended Videos

“I wasn’t looking for monsters,” Hurt said in a statement. “I just happened to glance at a region of sky that I’ve browsed many times before, but I’d never zoomed in on. Sometimes if you just crop an area differently, it brings out something that you didn’t see before. It was the eyes and mouth that roared ‘Godzilla’ to me.”

Hurt processed this image, along with many other Spitzer images, and Digital Trends previously interviewed him about his work doing image processing and illustrations for NASA. Even though Spitzer is now retired, Hurt and other astronomers continue to comb through the massive archive of public material that the telescope gathered over its 17-year mission.

The structure of Godzilla is seen in a nebula, which is a cloud of dust and gas that is formed into complex shapes by the births and deaths of stars within it. The bright yellow-ish region pictured in Godzilla’s right hand is called W33, and is a star-forming region in which some of the earliest features called “yellowballs” were noticed.

“It’s one of the ways that we want people to connect with the incredible work that Spitzer did,” Hurt said. “I look for compelling areas that can really tell a story. Sometimes it’s a story about how stars and planets form, and sometimes it’s about a giant monster rampaging through Tokyo.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Tens of thousands of galaxies glitter in first mosaics from Euclid Space Telescope
This image shows an area of Euclid’s Deep Field South. The area is zoomed in 16 times compared to the large mosaic.

Scientists working with the Euclid Space Telescope have released their first treasure trove of data, showing distant galaxies in deep field images of stunning detail. The telescope from the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in July 2023, is designed to study dark matter, the most mysterious substance in the universe. It does this by taking images across a huge portion of the sky, tracking the movements of galaxies on a large scale -- which gives clues to dark matter's presence through its gravitational effects.

In this first data release, scientists have shared three mosaics covering hundreds of thousands of galaxies, showing their many different shapes and sizes.

Read more
NASA’s Webb telescope peers straight at Saturn-like planets 130 light-years away
Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope is NASA's most precise and technically proficient equipment for observing the wonders of the universe. Astronomers rely on it to unravel the deepest secrets by peaking at distant solar systems and capturing planets like those in ours.

Much recently, the Webb Telescope was able to capture its first direct image of exoplanets nearly 130 light-years away from the Earth. The observatory seized images of four "giant" planets in the solar system of a distant star called HR 8799. This is a fairly young system formed roughly 30 million years ago, a timeline that dwarfs in comparison to our solar system's 4.6 billion years of age.

Read more
SpaceX will launch Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robot to Mars next year
Optimus Gen 2 humanoid robot by Tesla.

The year 2025 is going to be pivotal for Tesla’s humanoid robot plans, if the words of CEO Elon Musk are to be believed. But next year could mark an astronomical milestone for the company’s Optimus robot, in quite the literal sense.
Taking to X, Musk mentioned in a post that SpaceX will put an Optimus robot on Mars atop its flagship Starship rocket by the end of 2026. Just over a week ago, the Starship broke apart following a launch test, the second such failure this year.
“Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859078074303713447

This won’t be the first time Musk is making such a claim. Back in November last year, Musk mentioned that SpaceX was capable of sending “several uncrewed Starships” to the red planet within a couple of years and that the payload would include Optimus robots.
Tesla introduced a refined version of the Optimus robot at a glitzy event late in 2024. At the event, Musk told the crowd that Optimus was “the biggest product ever of any kind.” It was later reported that the robots were remotely operated by humans at the event.
Later, during the company’s Q4 2024 earnings calls, Musk shed more light on production plans, adding that the product has a revenue potential higher than $10 trillion. He also mentioned plans to manufacture thousands of humanoid robots in 2025.

Read more