67-Hubble Captures 3 Faces of Evolving Supernova

A stunning example is a galaxy cluster called Abell 370 that contains an astounding assortment of several hundred galaxies tied together by the mutual pull of gravity. That’s a lot of galaxies to be guarding, and just in this one cluster!

Through a “trick” of light-bending gravity, the Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova—all in one snapshot!

Einstein first predicted this phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, in his theory of general relativity. In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster.

The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously. They show the unfolding supernova over the course of a week.