Einstein and the incredible Hulk now have their own constellations (but you'll never see them)

For thousands of years, humans have looked up to the stars and ordered them to form constellations: the Hulk … the TARDIS … the Schrödinger cat.

Not familiar with these? It's probably because you can not see them without a gamma-ray telescope – and that NASA just invented them.

To highlight the first decade of discoveries recorded by NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray space telescope, US astronomers have linked the points to the unseen sources of gamma energy in the universe. This allowed the researchers to map 21 new constellations on the celestial sphere. You will not see these forms in the night sky; Despite being the most powerful light sources in the universe, gamma rays are invisible to the eyes of humans. But you can see all the shapes on a new interactive website designed by NASA scientists and artist Aurore Simonnet, of California's Sonoma State University. [11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy]

"Developing these unofficial constellations was a fun way to celebrate a decade of Fermi's accomplishments," said Julie McEnery, Fermi Project Scientist and Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. . "In one way or another, all gamma ray constellations have a connection to Fermi science."

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Since its deployment in 2008, the Fermi telescope has explored the cosmos for gamma-ray sources. These rays of high power are invisible to us, but constantly cross space. They glow in exploding stars, stretching in rotating pulsars and radiating from the edges of incredibly powerful black holes in the center of distant galaxies. (According to NASA, about half of the known gamma ray sources in the universe fall into this latter category.)

Seven years after the deployment of the telescope, Fermi had previously mapped about 3,000 previously unknown sources of gamma energy exploding in the sky, about 10 times the number of known sources before the mission, according to NASA.

Now paved in ersatz constellations, these gamma explosions take the form of global landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower and the Roman Coliseum), sci-fi spaceships (such as the Star Trek Enterprise spacecraft). and "Doctor Who", which travels back in time) and tributes to science icons like Einstein and the cardboard box containing the living / dead cat of Erwin Schrödinger. Perhaps the most elegant marriage between support and message is the constellation Hulk, which owes its famous viride body to a gamma-gambling experiment that went wrong.

Watch all these new models in the sky – and see where they stand in relation to the 88 visible light constellations we know and love – right here.

Originally posted on Live Science.