A massive galaxy cluster acts as a giant lens. Its gravity warps the fabric of space, and the light of distant objects, bending around this curvature, is amplified and split into multiple images.
The night sky is full of deceptive lights. Astronomers were searching for galaxies that ignited in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang: their light has traveled to us for nearly 13 billion years. Six faint smudges were selected from images taken by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.