Photoshopped NASA Photos Give New Life to Outer-Space Imagery

Remember when you were a kid and you used to stare up into the clouds and pick out shapes and animals? Well Chris Keegan has taken that timeless exercise to whole new level by applying it to photos of space from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

Like a child lying on the grass, he ponders a photo for a while and as soon as something jumps out he takes the image into Photoshop and starts rearranging the celestial elements to reinforce what he’s seen. 

A London-based illustrator by day, Keegan says he was particularly interested in the way the photos allowed him to play with scale. He usually works with much smaller ideas and objects, so playing with something as big as the stars was liberating.

“In one picture you can see thousands of stars and the idea of having a person or a bird taking up that sort of size was quite unusual,” he says.

Our favorites would have to be what looks like a quizzical gremlin (Wiseman) and the creature shooting stars out of its gullet (Seal). Let us know what you think in the comments.