An image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows what appears to be a smiling galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849. In the case of this "happy face," the two eyes are very bright galaxies and ...

Predicted by Einstein and discovered in 1979, gravitational lensing helps astrophysicists understand the evolving shape of the universe. On March 29, 1979, high in the Quinlan Mountains in the Tohono ...

A distant stellar explosion has offered astronomers a rare natural experiment, one that turns gravity into a powerful optical ...

The Hubble Space Telescope is a constant source of beautiful pictures of the wonders of space, and this week’s Hubble image shows a wonderful example of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, ...

A cosmologist has extended the relationship between the x-ray luminosity and the mass of galaxy clusters as measured by gravitational lensing, improving the reliability of mass measurements of much ...

Clumps and clusters of galaxies exhibit gravitational effects on the light-and-matter behind them due to the effects of weak gravitational lensing. In addition, arcs, multiple images of the same ...

The ring of light surrounding the centre of the galaxy NGC 6505, captured by ESA’s Euclid telescope, is a stunning example of an Einstein ring. NGC 6505 is acting as a gravitational lens, bending ...

Dark matter may be one of the most mysterious components of our Universe, having eluded direct detection since it was first proposed in the 1930s. Although the astrophysical evidence for its existence ...

The Universe is a bit bent. You’d think that light would travel in straight lines, going directly from point A to point B. But it’s more complicated than that. Space is curved, warped, distorted by ...