Please, please, venture a guess as to what this APOD has to do with Astronomy?
Picky, picky, picky. ;’)
The Mandelbrot set is much bigger than the entire physical universe. It is a universe of universes, infinite.
One could argue that those who explore it engaging in a type of astronomy, at least in an abstract sense.
In any event, I think that the type of curiosity that motivates one to explore the physical universe is probably related to the type of curiosity that motivates those who explore the Mandelbrot set.
It’s an artist’s “abstract” construct depicting the degradation of present-day society, representing the collective suckling & draining of the Government teat ....
Just about everything in nature has a fractal dimension, from galaxies to coastlines. Programs with fractal bases are what is used by CGI folk when they want to create a visualization of a fictional planet, because they look much more real than just about anything else.
In fact, folks have found fractals embedded in physical processes such as phase transitions from liquid to solid.
It's more relavant than you think, and besides, fractals look cool. :-)
I've played with mandelbulb before, but I really couldn't get anything cool out of it.