15 Mind-Blowing Pictures Of Space

This cheery little guy was snapped smiling for the camera by The Hubble Space Telescope.

The face is not actually all that it seems. The effect is what is known as an Einstein Ring and it is caused by a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

This happens when an object has such an enormous gravitational pull that it actually distorts and bends the light from the objects behind it. These cosmic lenses can be caused by black holes (it's one of the ways to detect them) or, as in this case, by a large cluster of galaxies.

It is an elegant demonstration of  Einstein's theory of general relativity as it shows the gravitational curvature of spacetime predicted in the famous theory.