NASA, as we know, constantly surveys the space in search of new celestials. However, it is pretty rare that they find something that refers to a space movie. For instance, scientists have never found something like the “monolith” that we saw in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nonetheless, the space organization recently reported that they have found a new galaxy that has the shape of a TIE Fighter spacecraft that exists in the Star Wars universe.
Now, the TIE Fighter jet has a unique bow-tie-like shape, with a circle in the middle and two vertical-flat wings on each side. In the Star Wars universe, the TIE is an acronym for Twin Iron Engine. However, director George Lucas added the name because he thought that the spacecraft simply had a design like ties.
Now, since the discovery, scientists have been using special instruments like Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to further study the galaxy. And recently they were able to capture an image (below) of the TXS 0128 at 15.4 gigahertz from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Image: NASA
“The first time I saw the results, I immediately thought it looked like Darth Vader’s TIE fighter spacecraft from ‘Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.’ That was a fun surprise, but its appearance at different radio frequencies also helped us learn more about how active galaxies can change dramatically on decade time scales.”, said Matthew Lister.
