The Hubble Scopes a Smiley Face
Here’s some cool science news from one of the coolest sites around - IFL Science:
Say cheese! The Hubble Space Telescope captured this friendly image of the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 in the constellation Ursa Major.
The eyes of this galactic happy face are two distant, bright galaxies, according to an ESA release, and lines that make up the face and smile are actually arcs created by an effect called strong gravitational lensing. Galaxy clusters are some of the universe’s most massive structures, capable of exerting a gravitational pull so strong, it warps the spacetime around them. By redirecting light rays, a galaxy cluster in the foreground acts as a cosmic lens that can magnify, distort, and bend the light that’s behind them. In this particular case, the bending of light from some faraway source produced a ring-like structure called an Einstein Ring: the result of an exact, symmetrical alignment of the light source, the lens, and the observer.