Some social media users likened the image to what might appear to be an aerial photo of India on Diwali night, a five-day festival of lights. However, a reverse image search revealed that the image in question was titled, “Cellular landscape cross-section through a eukaryotic cell” and was created by Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill for Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., a private biomedical company that studies cell signaling. Cell signaling occurs when individual cells communicate with one another in response to changes in their environment, according to Nature Education.
The image in question was a 3D rendering of a eukaryotic cell that was modeled using X-ray, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy datasets. Though it’s not a direct image of an animal cell, it was created to show processes that occur in animal cells.