Alex G. Kim

Light from a streetlamp passing through blinds flickers: the stripes shift, and brightness rises and falls. From that rhythm, you can guess how wide the lamp is. The new method for measuring stars works similarly: instead of capturing a sharp image, astronomers monitor the "twinkling" of light collected by two or more telescopes simultaneously.

A distant lamp shines through uneven glass. The glass bends the rays, and instead of one flame on the wall, several appear — some brighter, some fainter. In much the same way, a massive galaxy bends the light of an exploded star. There was one explosion, but the images show four glowing points.