Who’d have thought that a thermal imaging camera would one day find a strangely-shaped videogame character with a penchant for eating pellets and being chased by ghosts? Well that’s just what’s happened on one of Saturn’s moons, as a thermal imager has picked up the iconic game character hanging out on the moon Tethys.
The images of Pacman come from NASA’s robotic spacecraft Casinni that was sent to the Saturn system for surveillance purposes. Casinni uses a composite infrared spectrometer to send back thermal images of whatever it is scanning.
The bizarre appearance of the videogame icon is attributed to the distribution of heat around Tethys, with the theory being that high-energy electronics hit certain sections of the moon, which then don’t heat or cool correctly and create the unusual shape.
Thermal cameras are able to pick up on the heat distribution on Tethys, which is extremely cold due to lacking an atmosphere and being so far from the sun.
"Finding a new Pac-Man demonstrates the diversity of processes at work in the Saturn system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release. "Future Cassini observations may reveal other new phenomena that will surprise us and help us better understand the evolution of moons in the Saturn system and beyond."
Funnily enough, another Pacman has been found previously on another of Saturn’s moons, Mimas. Perhaps the other one is in fact Miss Pacman? Look for the bow on the head!
