Good things come in threes!
This Webb image features a special galaxy that appears three times. Why? There's a galaxy cluster here whose mass and gravity are so great that time and space around it gets warped. This magnifies, multiplies, and distorts distant galaxies behind the cluster, such as the one highlighted in the three white boxes. The effect is known as gravitational lensing.
The tripled galaxy contains an exploding star, part of a Type Ia (pronounced One-A) supernova. These supernovae have a standard brightness, but this particular galaxy’s supernova has been magnified by the cluster to look closer and brighter. By comparing the standard brightness with how bright this supernova appears to be, we can calculate the true distance of its galaxy.
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