1.

IN SPACE, NO
ONE CAN HEAR
YOU CACKLE!
THE WITCH HEAD
NEBULA
This witch is cooking up more than love
potions and newt stew with her hooked
chin, crooked nose and cold, pale blue
complexion. What’s brewing in her cosmic
cauldron is a sparkling batch of YSOs –
Young Stellar Objects – newborn stars that
have condensed from the gas and dust of
her nebulous form. Having a head that’s 70
light years across, it’ll take more than a
bucket of water to melt this witch. But
dissolving she is, as the intense radiation
from the nearby blue supergiant star Rigel
that illuminates her face will ultimately
destroy her. Whether she is a good or
wicked witch, she certainly casts a
powerful spell on our night sky.

Image Credit: Jeff Signorelli/Skycrumbles

2. CYDONIAN
SMILE
THE FACE ON MARS
Ever get the feeling you’re being
watched? The Viking 1 orbiter did!
Back in the 1970s, the NASA mission
that made the first successful landing
on the Red Planet also mapped the
surface of Mars from orbit. It glimpsed
craters, valleys, volcanoes, and A FACE
STARING UP INTO SPACE!The Face of
Mars, located in the Cydonia region of
Mars’ northern hemisphere, is a mile
(1.5km) across, has a distinctive nose,
mouth and deep dark eyes that follow
you around as you orbit.Obviously
signs of advanced Martian civilization!
But is it a greeting or warning? Or an
optical illusion? Later high resolution
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images of
the windswept mesa revealed a pretty
undistinguished windswept mesa. The
Face of Mars is all in your mind, but
can you ever unsee it?

Image Credit: NASA

3. A STAR FIT
FOR DRACULA
R LEPORIS
What star would Dracula wish upon?
Vampires are not keen on light (especially
from our star, the Sun), but we can be
confident the Count would gaze lovingly at
the blood red star R Leporis, 1360 light
years away in the constellation Lepus. This
star is a red giant, nearing the end of its
lifetime as the nuclear fuel at its core runs
on empty.Red giants are common, but R
Leporis is called a carbon star, where large
quantities of carbon created by nuclear
fusion makes its way to the star’s surface.
The carbon atoms are like atomic vampires
that feed on what little blue light there is,
making a red giant star even redder. A
dying star the color of blood? You can
almost detect a smile on the Count’s
crimson lips!

Image Credit: Martin Pugh

4.FRANKENWORLD
THE PULSAR PLANETS
OF PSR B1257
If Victor Frankenstein built planetary
systems instead of people, PSR B1257+12
would have been his masterpiece. First,
take two white dwarfs, the Earth-sized
cinders of dead Sun-like stars. Spin them
together until they collide, the explosion
splashing out a ring of debris that
eventually condenses to form new planets.
But like any lab experiment by a mad
scientist, things get out of hand.The
coalesced white dwarf stars have a
combined mass that awakens an invisible
monster - gravity. The atoms of the stars
find themselves being crushed to death,
squeezed by gravity from planet size to city
size in a blink of an eye.The creature that
emerges is a pulsar, a ball of neutrons
spinning as fast as a food processor,
sending out killer radiation beams like a
possessed lighthouse. Does this Gothic tale
of madness have a happy ending? Only
time (and telescopic observations) will tell
how the pulsar’s three children: Draugr,
Poltergeist and Phobetor, have turned
out.Well adjusted, we’re sure.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

5. STRAIGHT
OUTTA MORDOR
EVIL-EYE GALAXY M64
It is said that astronomers who have stared
into the eye of M64 are never the same
again. The cursed light from the Dark
Galactic Lord’s gaze pierces the soul and
reveals to him even your innermost
secrets, particularly if you’re hiding a ring
that doesn’t belong to you.

OK, I made all this up (it is Halloween after

all) and maybe Messier 64, a magnificent
spiral galaxy roughly the size of our own
Milky Way, is not quite the galactic demon
it appears. The dark dust clouds that give
the galaxy its brooding look are the raw
materials for star formation, and should
you dare a second look through the
telescope, you may see the glitter of newly
formed clusters of hot blue stars. These
clusters are M64’s next generation of stars,
planets and, perhaps, new life.There’s a
twinkle in the evil eye that suggests all is
well in the cosmos!

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Judy Schmidt

6. SATURN'S
JEKYLL & HYDE
MOON : IAPETUS
Do you have a dark side? Saturn’s moon
Iapetus does. One side of the moon is
dazzlingly bright white, one of the
brightest surfaces in the solar system. The
other hemisphere is as dark as coal, a deep,
dried blood shade of reddish-brown.If you
were to approach Iapetus by spacecraft
from one side or the other, you could
believe that two distinct moons and two
personalities occupy the same region of
space. If you were an advanced alien
civilization, what better way to freak out a
primitive spacefaring race than painting a
moon half black and half white? In this
case, the crazy dichotomy is down to
mother nature. Iapetus is tidally locked to
Saturn, which means, just like our Moon,
the same hemisphere is always leading,
and the other trailing as it orbits. As the
leading edge moves through space,
meteorites and space debris collide with
the moon, leaving dust deposits on its
surface. The training edge retains its
pristine ice-white hue. The mystery is
solved – Iapetus is not a possessed sphere
or a victim of alien graffiti; it’s simply a
planetary mop!

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Cassini Imaging Team

 7. COSMIC SKULL
THE PERSEUS
CLUSTER IN X-RAY
Can a galaxy cluster be haunted? The Perseus
galaxy cluster looks quite normal in visible light.
Just a thousand sparkling galaxies bound together
in a gravitational dance. But take another look at
the cluster using an X-ray telescope. At the center
of the Perseus cluster is a giant laughing skull! Its
big dark eyes and grinning toothless smile must
mean an evil spirit has taken up residence, and
with a skull a hundred thousand light years across,
it’s one that would give even Scooby-Doo an
adversary of cosmic proportions. As always,
there’s more to this skull than meets your eyes, or
in this case, meets the electronic detectors of the
Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The Perseus skull is a
fifty million degree phantom made of ultra-hot
gas. Its bright nose shows the location of a
supermassive black hole that generates two
powerful jets of particles; these jets blow galaxy-
sized bubbles (the eyes) in the hot gas. And the
skull’s dark mouth? Probably just the silhouette of
a passing galaxy. In the end, a skull isn’t too scary;
it’s just a skull. But a supermassive black hole
terrorizing an entire cluster of galaxies? Now
that’s something to raise the hairs on the back of
your neck…

NASA/CXC/IoA Cambridge/A. Fabian

8. GHOSTS AND
SPECTRES
THE SPOOKY NEBULA
SH2 136
In space, as they say, no one can hear you
scream, and maybe the best way to glimpse
the ghostly apparitions of reflection nebula
SH2 136 is in the rear-view mirror of your
starship. These glowing spooks, standing
two light years in height, are oozing
ectoplasm made from molecules of
hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. But perhaps
they’re not trying to scare us away, simply
trying to get our attention to witness
something amazing: the birth of a new
generation of stars, created from the
gravitational collapse of the molecular
cloud that gives them their demonic forms.
A couple of newborns are already visible
peeking out from the brown, gassy veil,
their starlight almost looking like
flashlights under a ruddy blanket.So
maybe we should stick around for a while,
but to be on the safe side, let’s find a giant
sofa-shaped nebula to hide behind!

Image Credit: Bodgan Jarzyna Astrophotography

9. VAMPIRE
HANGOUT
ERLANGER CRATER
Vampires aren’t keen on sunlight, which is a problem
on planet Earth because sunrise is a pretty regular
occurrence. The same is true for the Moon, where its
monthly orbit around the Earth provides plenty of
solar radiation to make even the most adventurous
undead astronaut uneasy. But the Moon does provide
some perfect vampire hangout at the lunar poles.
Because the Moon is only tilted very slightly on its
axis (unlike the Earth), sunlight always hits the lunar
poles at grazing angles. Deep impact craters at the
poles, like Erlanger, have their rims illuminated, but
sunlight never makes it down to the crater floor.
NEVER EVER. These Permanently Shadowed Regions
have been in absolute darkness for billions of years.
The deep dark depths of Erlanger crater would be a
perfect party spot for fun-loving vampires, never
having to worry about the sun coming up.Although
we suspect, like all parties on the Moon, there
wouldn’t be much of an atmosphere…

Image Credit: NASA/LRO

10. ONE-WAY
TICKET TO
OBLIVION
THE BLACK HOLE OF M87
At the center of almost every galaxy lies a
supermassive black hole.With masses equal to
millions, or billions of Suns, the biggest are the size
of entire solar systems. Black holes are invisible,
detectible only by the gravitational pull they have
on their surroundings and by the glow of hot gas
or shredded stars that are in the process of falling
in. All this makes them pretty scary, like an old,
haunted house on a hill. But as we know from any
good horror movie, the true weirdness only starts
when you cross the threshold and go inside…

Of course, you want to see what’s in there! And at

first, nothing really changes. Or does it? Crossing
the “event horizon” is no big deal. It’s not a
physical barrier, but should you then decide to
rocket back out, you find you can’t because your
rocket would have to travel at greater than the
speed of light (and sorry, it doesn’t!) You’d also
notice that events outside the horizon are
happening faster and faster. By the time you cross
the horizon, the entire history of the universe has
flashed before your eyes. There is no home left to
return to. Then you notice that, no matter how
much you rev your rocket engines, you are
inexorably drawn down closer and closer to the
center of the black hole. Waiting for you is the
Singularity, a point in space with zero size and
infinite density. As you, your spaceship, and your
atoms are shredded by the intense gravity, you are
squeezed out of existence to become part of the
black hole itself, made of nothing but space and
time. Happy Halloween!

Image Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

11. NIGHT OF
THE LIVING
PLANET!
There is a world in the outer reaches of the Milky
Way where you never have to wait long for night
to come. As its pale dwarf star sinks below the
horizon, a chill wind whips up waves from an
angry ocean that almost blankets this small rocky
planet. There are many ocean worlds in the
galaxy, but there is something about this one – it
feels almost…alive.

Now dive deep into the black waters of the global

ocean, far down where starlight never penetrates,
where the pressure is beyond the crushing surface
of Venus and there you will find them, or maybe,
they will find you: enough scary creatures for a
thousand horror movies! Bone-eating worms! Foot
long pill bugs! Crawling cucumbers! Glowing
jellyfish that look like graceful angels, but are in
reality prowling killers! There is no place like this
in the universe, at once terrifying, fascinating and
unbelievable beautiful, welcome to the oceans of
Earth! Welcome to YOUR world!

Image Credit: The Monterey Bay Aquarium

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