THIS NASA photo went viral on Instagram; guess what it is! Answer will Shock you

Recently, NASA posted a viral image on its Instagram page and asked the followers to guess what the picture was. Almost everyone failed to guess it correctly. Can you?

NASA posted a viral image on Instagram and asked followers to correctly guess what the image was. Check out what it really was (NASA Instagram)

A couple of days ago, NASA posted an intriguing image on its Instagram page and asked its followers, “What do you see in the image”? The post was soon crowded by space aficionados who tried to guess the answer, but most failed. This recent NASA viral image is a series of posts NASA does on its social media handles in order to promote awareness and education around space and technology. These interactive and engaging posts are a great way to teach people about things that exist in our universe but are barely talked about. Not leaving the followers curious, NASA Instagram page later edited the post to reveal the real answer. Read on to find out.

The image featured four black and white structures with different 3D geometric shapes. In order to make it more fun, NASA even offered some hints to all the participants of this game. NASA said that it could be a mini James Webb Space Telescope or even “two starfighters from a galaxy far, far away,” referencing the popular space movie Star Wars. These interactive posts by NASA create a lot of buzz on social media. This post had NASA trending all over Instagram with more than 4.3 lakh likes and more than 2,300 comments.

What is the NASA viral image really about?

Even though many commentators took cues from NASA to guess ‘Tie Fighter', a small spaceship in the Star Wars movie, it was not really the right answer. Other responses included ‘Captain America's shield', cryptocurrency and mini satellites. But sadly none of them were correct. After a while, NASA came to the rescue and answered what the image really was. It turns out the NASA viral image were snowflakes. But the story behind it is way more interesting than you can imagine.

“These are a few of the many snowflake images collected by NASA's IMPACTS mission, which studies the snowstorms common to the Northeastern U.S.,” the post said. NASA also explained exactly how these snowflakes particles were collected - by flying directly into the snowstorms.

“The instruments and probes attached to the P-3 aircraft are able to collect samples to measure snow particles and atmospheric properties within the storm clouds. Each of the aircraft's instruments has a special use: taking high-definition photos of ice particles, measuring the total amount of water (both in liquid and ice form), measuring the size of full and partial snow particles, and sampling shattered particles. These data-collecting tools can sample over 30 million particles in a single eight-hour flight alone,” NASA added.

But the American space agency didn't just leave it at that. Aiming to make it an educational experience, NASA explained the true objective behind the campaign and what it wanted to achieve.

“The goal of the mission is to develop greater comprehension of winter storm formation and development by using several instruments that examine the microphysical characteristics of snow particles at various temperatures and altitudes. The data collected during the multi-year IMPACTS campaign will help advance snowfall remote sensing interpretation and modeling to significantly improve the future of snowstorm forecasting and prediction capabilities.”