Hubble Telescope discovers deep-space "Smiley Face"

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Deep-space phenomena doesn’t always appear to be disquieting (like this Eye of Sauron wannabe glaring at us from 12 billion light years away).

      It’s not all supernovae, roaming near-Earth-orbit asteroids, and ravenous supermassive black holes. And the universe probably isn’t giving you the finger, despite what this molecular cloud in the Carina Nebula appears to be doing.

      Sometimes it seems to be coming from a happy place, like this fortuitous grouping (from our standpoint) of galaxies 4.5 billion light years away in Ursa Major, a constellation better known in the Northern Hemisphere for its instantly recognizable “Big Dipper” star configuration (called “Saptarshi" in India).

      This “smiley face”, as astronomers have dubbed it, comes to us courtesy of (what else?) the Hubble Space Telescope and is an example of gravitational lensing, or an Einstein Ring.

      This occurs when light from a distant source is warped, or bent, by the gravitational force caused by a galaxy cluster (directly between the light’s origin and the receiver, here on Earth) that may contain trillions of stars, for instance, or just a massive single galaxy.

      Once you start looking for such things, you may start seeing them everywhere, as did researchers when they were looking over first-day images taken by a camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor during a mapping orbit in March 1999. This crater—officially named Galle, on the east side of Argyre Planitia, but called “Happy Face Crater” by the less scientifically inclined—is 215 kilometres in diameter and covered with wintertime frost.

      NASA/JPL/MSSS

      In space, no one can hear you worry.

      So be happy.

      Comments