All About Space reveals the scariest stars, planets and galaxies lurking in the corners of our universe

Written by Laura Mears

Space has been an inspiration behind human mythology for thousands of years, and with a little help from technology, we are capturing some images that really bring these legends to life. However, far from being evidence of the supernatural at work, the spooky space images that we are about to show you are nothing out of the ordinary.

Humans can’t help but try to find meaning in meaningless shapes, and the phenomenon even has a name – ‘pareidolia’. It is why we see faces in the clouds, religious icons in our food and constellations in the night sky.

The universe really is a dangerous place, where massive galaxies swallow up their neighbours and greedy stars feast on their close companions. But with the power of pareidolia, it also has witches and ghosts made from glowing gas, zombie stars and winking demons. Our Sun has even transformed into a grinning pumpkin. Our universe has it all. Read on for our pick of the most terrifying space objects.

1 HELL PLANET

CoRoT-7 b is one of the most Earth-like planets ever discovered, but this alien world is no place for a human. Just over oneand-a-half times the size of our own planet, and almost five times the mass, CoRoT-7 b more closely resembles a depiction of hell than a second home. Its star, CoRoT-7, is younger than ours, and CoRoT-7 b orbits it at around 2.5 million kilometres (1.5 million miles) – 60 times closer than Earth is to the Sun. This journey takes just over 20 hours, and the planet skims so close that its surface melts under the daylight and the rocks boil away into space.

Scientists think CoRoT-7 b could once have been a gas giant with a mass similar to Saturn. It originally orbited around 50 per cent farther away from its star, but the searing heat stripped away the outer layers of gas. The planet is thought to have lost several Earth masses of material, and as it decreased in size, gravitational tides changed its orbit, bringing CoRoT-7 b even closer to the heat of its star.