[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, ESA, and S. Rodney (JHU) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (UCLA), P. Kelly (UC Berkeley), and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH team; and Z. Levay (STScI)\

What are the unusual spots surrounding that galaxy? They are all images of the same supernova.

For the first time, a single supernova explosion has been seen split into multiple images by the gravitational lens deflections of intervening masses. In this case the masses are a large galaxy and its home galaxy cluster.

The featured image was captured last November by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

The yellow-hued quadruply-imaged Supernova Refsdal occurred in the early universe far behind the cluster.

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  CosmicTribune.com, far away and long, long ago, Multiple images of a supernova from far