An unusual galaxy cluster called SDSS J1038+4849 appears to smile at us in a newly-released image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
This image from Hubble shows the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 that appears to have two eyes and a nose as part of a happy face. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Judy Schmidt, geckzilla.org.
This ‘smiling face’ resides in the constellation Ursa Major. It was spotted by amateur astronomer Judy Schmidt, who submitted a version of the image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
The two eyes are the distant galaxies SDSSCGB 8842.3 and SDSSCGB 8842.4.
The smile lines are, in reality, arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.
Massive structures in the Universe exert such a powerful gravitational pull that they can warp the space-time around them and act as cosmic lenses which can magnify, distort and bend the light behind them.
This phenomenon, crucial to many of Hubble’s discoveries, can be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
In this special case of gravitational lensing, an Einstein Ring is produced from this bending of light, a result of the exact and symmetrical alignment of the source, lens and observer.
That’s why astronomers see the ring-like structure.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the tools to probe these giant objects and model their lensing effects.
Because of this, they can peer further into the early Universe than ever before.
