A chance configuration of objects arrayed across deep space has just revealed the hiding place of a giant glob of dark matter .

Configurations like these, known as Einstein crosses, typically consist of four distinct points of light. This particular example, named HerS-3, has a feature never seen before. At the center of the cross appears a fifth blob of light.

"That's not supposed to happen," says theoretical astrophysicist Charles Keeton of Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the US. "You can't get a fifth image in the center unless something unusual is going on with the mass that's bending the light."

Related: Astronomers Amazed by Perfect 'Einstein Ring' Gleaming in Space

An Einstein cross in and of itself is a particularly rare cosmic phenomenon, created by light traveling

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