---
title: "Gaze in Awe at This Fiery Pac-Man Shaped Supernova, Gobbling Stars"
description: "NASA's Hubble telescope just snapped a photo of a supernova's aftermath, which is shaped like Pac-Man, as it goes about gobbling up stars."
date: "2021-10-18"
modified: "2021-10-18"
authors:
  - name: "Foster Kamer"
    job_title: "Editor-in-Chief"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/foster"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/pac-man-supernova"
categories:
  - "Off-World"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "hubble"
  - "telescopes"
  - "the digest"
---

# Gaze in Awe at This Fiery Pac-Man Shaped Supernova, Gobbling Stars

![NASA's Hubble telescope just snapped a photo of a supernova's aftermath, which is shaped like Pac-Man, as it goes about gobbling up stars.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/pacgal.jpg>)
*Futurism \<em\>Image: Futurism\</em\>*

## Snacky Supernova

Chances are, at some point, you've looked towards the sky and been awestruck by a cloud that resembles a worldly object. It takes the right place, the right time, and the right kind of imagination.

It's that kind of serendipity that's clearly best suited for a job, say, working at NASA with the Hubble Space Telescope and catching images of the swirling, distant cosmos — as they did last week, when they released an incredible image of supernova remnants that look just like Pac-Man, gobbling up a bunch of stars.

https://twitter.com/SPACEdotcom/status/1450056772375531523

## N 63A-OK

[Via Space.com](<https://www.space.com/pac-man-shaped-supernova-remnant>), the image shows N 63A, which is the dregs of a supernova, meaning the explosion that can occur over the final phases of a star's lifespan.

N 63 A — which is located in a satellite galaxy of our own, in what's called the [Large Magellanic Cloud (LMG)](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud>), 163,000 light years away from the Milky Way — isn't a supernova itself, but its aftermath, the mess after the party. While supernovas typically leave a mess of heavy elements and gases all over the place, per [NASA](<https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/like-monsters-in-the-sky/>), "N 63A is still young, and its ruthless shocks are destroying the ambient gas clouds, rather than coercing them to collapse and form stars."

And yes, it also looks a lot like Pac-Man, chomping up Pac-Man's power pellets, which in this case, would be stars.

## Game Recognize Game

Just to be clear, because we have to say it: No, this thing isn't actually eating stars. It's just shaped like it is. Meanwhile, for those in the cheap seats, if you don't know what Pac-Man is, please tell us who's been keeping you locked in a basement all these years.

Pac-Man was released by Japanese video game company Namco in 1980 by a nine-person team, after game director Toru Iwatani invented a character inspired by not a supernova's hangover, but a pizza with a slice taken from it. The game went on to gross over $14 billion in revenue since its release, and is inarguably one of the most ubiquitous pieces of pop culture iconography, full stop (Google even turned it into [a playable Google Doodle](<https://g.co/kgs/BG5Fpt>)).

The Pac-Man of it all not withstanding, it's great to see Hubble back up and running [after some technical issues hobbled it](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-fixes-hubble-space-telescope>) for a few weeks over the summer. But a working telescope is only worth so much without an excellent imagination at the helm. Clearly, it's not just Hubble that's working well these days: Kudos to whoever at NASA had the wide-eyed wonder to spot this and share it with a world who can also recognize one of its most well-known characters, up there in the sky, looking monstrous and invincible.

**READ MORE:** [Like Monsters in the Sky](<https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/like-monsters-in-the-sky>) \[NASA\]

**More Hot Hubble Action:** [*Hubble Takes Breathtaking Image of "Furnace" Galaxy*](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/hubble-furnace-galaxy>)

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/foster.bsky.social>)