Biggest light telescope in world captures ‘dragon head’ nebula

By Dean Murray

Do you see a dragon head - or a chicken pecking seeds on the ground?

Astronomers have release a cosmic picture taken by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), which sits atop a mountain in Chile.

It has been shared to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the telescope's first light.

The VST is managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and is hosted by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at its Paranal Observatory.

ESO said: "Imagine for a moment you are lying back, gazing up at the red-orange celestial clouds in today’s Picture of the Week.

"What shapes do you see? A chicken pecking seeds on the ground, the head of a dragon, or something else entirely?"

ESO explains that the pareidolia-inducing clouds are a pair of nebulae — collections of dust and gas in interstellar space — called Gum 10 and Gum 11.

Pareidolia is the tendency of the human brain to perceive familiar shapes or patterns, such as faces or animals, in random or ambiguous visual data.