The Hubble Telescope Has Found a Smile in Space to Warm Your Heart

The universe, it seems, is pretty pleased with the Hubble Space Telescope. I mean, just look at that smile!

Kidding aside, it's hard to miss what looks like a cosmic smiley face in this photo from the Hubble telescope. It's especially poignant given the troubles the aging Hubble had recently when balky gyroscopes knocked the space telescope offline for weeks until a fix could be devised. (That fix succeeded, and Hubble is back in action.)

And so, the universe smiled.

This view from Hubble shows a vast array of galaxies, many of them from the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434. The smiley face is actually a trick of gravity and light. Two brilliant galaxies form the eyes while a third, distorted galaxy forms the "smile." [The Hubble Space Telescope's Greatest Discoveries]

The arc of that smile is due to gravitational lensing, as NASA and the European Space Agency explained in a statement: "The lower, arc-shaped galaxy has the characteristic shape of a galaxy that has been gravitationally lensed — its light has passed near a massive object en route to us, causing it to become distorted and stretched out of shape."

This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows a wide view of the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434, which includes three that form a cosmic smiley face.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla)

This photo was captured by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, which astronauts installed during the last servicing mission to the space telescope in 2010. ESA officials released the image on Oct. 15, and NASA showcased the space smile on Nov. 2. The Hubble Space Telescope is 18 years old. It launched into space in April 1990.

"Hubble captured this image in an effort to understand how new stars spring to life throughout the cosmos," NASA officials said. "WFC3 is able to view distant galaxies at an unprecedented resolution — high enough to locate and study regions of star formation within them."

This isn't the first time Hubble has captured a smile in space.

In 2015, another group of gravitationally lensed galaxies created a dazzling smiley face, this one compete with nose and cheeks. That face was made up of galaxies from the cluster SDSS J1038+4849

Seeing faces in space is nothing new. But that doesn't mean the universe is trying to cheer us up. The phenomenon is called pareidolia, and is when we see familiar shapes or patterns in objects that aren't actually there. The iconic Face on Mars photo from NASA's Viking missions is a famous example of pareidolia.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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