This stunning picture is what resulted when a group of astronomers and NASA pointed the Hubble Space Telescopeat a galaxy 10 billion light-years away. Its remarkable clarity is because of a relativistic effect called gravitational lensing, which in this case really acts like a magnifying glass. The galaxy in question, in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623, is the brightest distant magnified galaxy ever seen, and is very actively forming stars.

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Rigby, K. Sharon