NASA's Hubble telescope spotted what appears to be a smiling face in a galaxy cluster. NASA posted the picture on its website. It shows what looks like two glowing eyes, a button nose and the form of a smile underneath. There is even the shape of a head on the outer edges of the smile. It resembles popular smile emojis used in social media and texting.
NASA says the two eyes are actually very bright galaxies and what looks like a smile is actually arcs caused by what is known as strong gravitational lensing. In this case, the light bends because of the way the source lined up with the lens and the person observing it. The ring is known as an Einstein Ring.
This smiling phenomenon was actually spotted by someone in 2012, and it was entered into Hubble's Hidden Treasure competition. The European Space Agency just released the image this week.
NASA’s Hubble telescope spotted what appears to be a smiling face in a galaxy cluster. (Randy Salas/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
In the centre of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 — and it seems to be smiling. You can make out its two orange eyes and white button nose. In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are very bright galaxies and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing. Galaxy clusters are the most massive structures in the Universe and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that they warp the spacetime 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, a ring — known as an Einstein Ring — is produced from this bending of light, a consequence of the exact and symmetrical alignment of the source, lens and observer and resulting in the ring-like structure we see here. Hubble has provided astronomers with the tools to probe these massive galaxies and model their lensing effects, allowing us to peer further into the early Universe than ever before. This object was studied by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) as part of a survey of strong lenses. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt. (Randy Salas — NASA & ESA Acknowledgement: Judy/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
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