Hubble Space Telescope captures a happy face looking over Earth

Happy face from space ... Good morning sunshine, the galaxy says hello. Picture: NASA/ ESA Source: Supplied

WHAT is round, has two shining eyes, a button nose and a big, welcoming smile? A galaxy, apparently.

And it’s smiling down on us.

In what has quickly become a delightfully quirky interstellar tag on Twitter, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a close up photograph of a constellation of stars which, when viewed from Earth, look like a supremely happy cartoon face.

Hubble spots a galaxy smiling at us http://t.co/Gdo8XweHDo Credit: @NASA & @ESA Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt http://t.co/GnZl3Jg204

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) February 9, 2015

According to the Hubble website, the glowing “eyes” are actually very bright galaxies, and the “smile” is a space effect known as “strong gravitational leasing” — caused by a massive body nestled between a distant object and Earth, resulting in the appearance of two or more objects where only one exists.

Galaxy clusters are the biggest structures in the universe. They are so incredibly powerful that their gravitational pull can warp the space-time continuum around them, as well as bend light.

The effect of this particular interstellar spectacle has also created a celestial effect called an “Einstein Ring” — named after Albert Einstein — which occurs when a light travelling in a straight line from a source that is bent by a massive body distorts space-time.

The Hubble telescope also recently captured the three moons of Jupiter simultaneously moving across the planet — another rare cosmic event occurring, at most, twice every 10 years.

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