NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured the fabric of space-time being warped.
In an image captured by the observatory's NIRCam instrument, distant galaxies are magnified and warped due to an effect called gravitational lensing.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object like the foreground galaxy cluster has such a massive gravitational pull that it warps time and space around it.
The lensing galaxy cluster, known as SDSS J1226+2149, lies at a distance of around 6.3 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices.
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"Light follows that bend instead of traveling in a straight line, distorting and brightening what’s behind the object," the Webb team explained on Twitter.
A distant galaxy, known as the Cosmic Seahorse, is seen with a long distorted arc near the core, with its brightness greatly magnified by the gravitational lens.
The galaxies appear like bright smears of light spread throughout the image.
Using gravitation lensing, astronomers are able to study objects that would otherwise be too far away, revealing some of the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered.
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This effect here has let scientists study star formation in the Cosmic Seahorse.
In order to do so, the team relied on previous studies from the Hubble Space Telescope, which the European Space Agency said provided the "prescription" for this gravitational lens.
"As well as revealing how quickly stars form and characterizing the environments in these galaxies that gave rise to new stars, these observations will demonstrate the capabilities of Webb and provide richly detailed datasets to the astronomical community," the agency said.
This is not the first time Webb has captured such an effect.
A previous image featuring the galaxy cluster RX J2129 showed three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy.
The telescope also captured never-before-seen details in a region known as Pandora's Cluster, with the combined mass of three galaxy clusters creating a gravitational lens and allowing scientists to observe more distant galaxies in the early universe.
