Day 7 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Warped View Through an Einstein Ring. You are seeing two galaxies here, one in front of the other. The more distant spiral galaxy appears warped and distorted due to the gravitational lensing occurring around a massive, much closer galaxy, which is part of galaxy cluster SMACSJ0028.2-7537. The circular shape of the distortions gives the phenomenon its name, Einstein ring, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1912.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.
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Alan Taylor is a senior editor at The Atlantic.
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