Say cheese! NASA reveals stunning image of giant ‘cosmic smile’ created by warped spacetime

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Published: 05:29 EDT, 13 October 2026 | Updated: 05:29 EDT, 13 October 2026

NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant ‘cosmic smile’ created by the warping of spacetime.

This bizarre portrait was captured by NASA and the European Space Agency using the Hubble Space Telescope.

It shows the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849, located 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.

Strangely, you can clearly make out two glowing orange eyes, a white button nose, and a broad sparkling smile stretching across a vast expanse of space.

NASA explains: ‘In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are very bright galaxies, and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.’

Galaxy clusters are some of the most massive objects in the universe, containing hundreds of individual galaxies, and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that it warps spacetime around them.

This effect, originally predicted by Albert Einstein, means that light from distant objects bends as it passes through an optical lens.

In some rare cases, that creates a brilliant circle known as an Einstein Ring that can look just like a glowing celestial grin.

NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant ‘cosmic smile’ created by the warping of spacetime

According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, objects with enough mass can warp and stretch the fabric of spacetime around them – like a bowling ball on a trampoline.

When light enters these warped regions, it follows the curve of spacetime so that it appears to bend.

While this happens on a small scale around smaller objects like planets and suns, the more massive the object, the more dramatically light is bent.

Around some of the most massive objects in the universe, that effect is so strong it can be seen through our telescopes as gravitational lensing.

Einstein rings, like the one that makes this cosmic smile, are a special case of gravitational lensing produced when a distant light source is perfectly aligned with a powerful gravitational lens and the observer.

This precise alignment allows the light to bend symmetrically around the massive source of gravity to appear as a ring-like structure.

Gravitational lensing doesn’t always produce such perfect illusions, and the results vary depending on how the object, lens, and observer line up.

Just like glasses lenses, strong gravitational fields can warp or magnify passing light, even producing multiple images of a single object.

The gravitational pull of extremely massive objects, such as galaxy clusters like MACS0416 (pictured), warps and stretches spacetime around them

Bent spacetime causes light to curve around massive objects, sometimes producing multiple distorted images of a distant object. In this image, the light of a distant supernova has been split into four images, in an effect known as an Einstein Cross

Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bend the light emitted from a more distant galaxy.

This forms a highly magnified, though much distorted image.

This is because massive objects bend the spacetime around them, making light travel in a different path.

This theory was first proposed by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity.

In 2014, for example, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.6+2223, located about five billion light-years from Earth.

With the additional mass of a huge galaxy embedded in the cluster, light coming from an exploding star known as Supernova Refsdal, about 9.3 billion light-years away, was warped and stretched.

Gravitational lensing created four identical copies of the supernova arranged around the galaxy, creating a structure known as an Einstein Cross.

Rings and lensing effects like these were critical in proving that Einstein’s theories about spacetime were actually correct.

However, they are now helping astronomers to probe the most distant reaches of the universe.

One possibility astronomers are now exploring is using gravitational lensing to measure the mass of stars.

If they know where a distant bright object should appear, astronomers can look past the edge of a star and measure how much the light is being bent.

Scientists use gravitational lensing to look at light from extremely distant objects, such as Earendel (pictured), the most distant star ever observed at 12.9 billion light-years from Earth

This method was first used in 2023 to measure the mass of a single, isolated white dwarf, revealing that it was 56 per cent as large as our sun.

Because gravitational lensing can amplify light from distant objects, it also allows space telescopes to see much further than they normally would be capable of.

In 2022, scientists used Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope to peer through a gravitational lens at a single star located 12.9 billion light-years away.

Known as Earendel, this is the most distant single star ever observed, and its light started travelling towards Earth when the universe was less than one billion years old.

In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers – known as the theory of special relativity.

This groundbreaking work introduced a new framework for all of physics, and proposed new concepts of space and time.

He then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory, finally publishing his theory of general relativity in 1915.

This determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.

At its simplest, it can be thought of as a giant rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the centre.

Pictured is the original historical documents related to Einstein’s prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, shown at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem

As the ball warps the sheet, a planet bends the fabric of space-time, creating the force that we feel as gravity.

Any object that comes near to the body falls towards it because of the effect.

Einstein predicted that if two massive bodies came together it would create such a huge ripple in space time that it should be detectable on Earth.

It was most recently demonstrated in the hit film film Interstellar.

In a segment that saw the crew visit a planet which fell within the gravitational grasp of a huge black hole, the event caused time to slow down massively.

Crew members on the planet barely aged while those on the ship were decades older on their return.