Giant smiley face by Hubble

The giant smiley face spotted by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is actually two faint galaxies that seem to be smiling.

In this “happy face” the two eyes are the galaxies SDSSCGB 8842.3 and SDSSCGB 8842.4 and the misleading smile lines are actually 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 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.

source spacetelescope