Photo by Juan Carlos Casado.

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Juan Carlos Casado – StarryEarth on Flickr – submitted this photo to EarthSky. He captured it in Saariselkä, Lapland, Finland on March 28, 2017 and wrote:

All night the sky was full of auroras, which sometimes intensified showing colors, movements and striking structures, like this one that reminds of a seahorse. The image was captured with a fisheye lens and a modified Sony A7S camera, which thanks to its high sensitivity allows to take shorter exposures and capture more detail in the auroras.

Wonderful shot … thank you, Juan Carlos!

Read about pareidolia and see more photos

See more photos by Juan Carlos Casado

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Juan Carlos also kindly provided this annotated image.

Bottom line: An example of pareidolia – seeing a familiar shape in an unrelated object – in this case the shape of a seahorse in an aurora.

Deborah Byrd

Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.