Yesterday, NASA shared a photo taken from its Hubble Space Telescope, which resembles what NASA called a “cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber.”
This cosmic lightsaber is in our own galaxy, but it’s still far, far away — 1,350 light-years according to NASA.
The images are actually the birth of a new star, and the lightsaber-like parts are jets of nebulous gas that form as those jets combine with other surrounding gases in the cloud complex.
However, it wasn’t exactly a coincidence that NASA released this photo on the eve of the latest Star Wars film.
“Science fiction has been an inspiration to generations of scientists and engineers, and the film series Star Wars is no exception,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission directorate. “There is no stronger case for the motivational power of real science than the discoveries that come from the Hubble Space Telescope as it unravels the mysteries of the universe."