This image shows the huge galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223, whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us.
<p>The huge mass of the cluster and one of the galaxies within it is bending the light from supernova SN Refsdal behind them and creating four separate images of it. The light has been magnified and distorted due to gravitational lensing and as a result the images are arranged around the elliptical galaxy in a formation known as an Einstein cross.
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A close-up of the Einstein cross is shown in the inset.
NASA, ESA, S. Rodney (Johns Hopkins University, USA) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (University of California Los Angeles, USA), P. Kelly (University of California Berkeley, USA) and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH team; and Z. Levay (STScI)
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1505a/">http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1505a/</a> (<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/original/heic1505a.tif">image source</a>); see also <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-s-hubble-discovers-four-images-of-same-supernova-split-by-cosmic-lens/">http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-s-hubble-discovers-four-images-of-same-supernova-split-by-cosmic-lens/</a>