Etienne Bachelet

One night, a star at the edge of the sky suddenly flickered and brightened for a few days. It wasn't a supernova, and no cloud passed by — an invisible planet drifted between the star and Earth. Its gravity bent the light of the distant star like a pair of glasses focusing a sunbeam.

The light of a distant star is no perfect beacon. Passing through the gravitational field of another star, it bends, splits, and magnifies, creating a fleeting Einstein ring in the sky. This is how gravitational microlensing manifests, predicted by Fritz Zwicky back in the 1930s.