March 5, 2013: The universe is eerie enough without giving us an
apparition of a 1980s video game alien attacker. This oddball-
looking object is really a mirage created by the gravitational
field of a foreground cluster of galaxies warping space and
distorting the background images of more distant galaxies. This
effect, called gravitational lensing, can make multiple mirror
image copies of the light coming from a far-flung galaxy. It is
a powerful tool for seeing remote galaxies that otherwise would
not be observable by Hubble because they are too dim and far
away. In this Hubble photo a background spiral galaxy is warped
into an image that resembles a cartoon of a simulated space
invader. The foreground massive cluster, called Abell 68, lies 2
billion light-years away. The brightened and stretched lensed
images come from galaxies far behind it.See the rest: