Sometimes galaxies and galaxy clusters are capable of warping the spacetime around them in such a way that faint background objects suddenly appear magnified. It's a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing and it can turn those galaxies into wide arcs and even rings, known as Einstein rings. The Hubble Space Telescope has detected the largest so far known.
Hubble has discovered it in GAL-CLUS-022058s and it is the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever observed in the universe. The gravity of a galaxy cluster in the constellation Fornax (The Furnace, The Furnace) has created multiple images of a distant spiral galaxy.
Given its peculiar ring shape and the fact that it is on the Fornax, astronomers have nicknamed it "The Molten Ring." The gravitational lensing technique is also an important way to study what we cannot see in the universe, such as black holes and dark matter.
All of these phenomena have been used to better understand gravity itself, but they have also allowed observations and discoveries that would not have been possible without the magnification they provide.
NASA / ESA / HUBBLE
