Starship Asterisk*

Is it possibly a gravity lens effect?
Thank you for the daily Astronomy information and beautiful pictures.

He's refering to http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060314.html

Has anyone posted a satisfactory explaination for this? It appears to be a gravity lens, but I would have thought that such a nifty effect would have been noted in the text.

It _could_ be an asterism, but hey, what do I know.

IANAA, but my explanation: coincidence. I can find even more elaborate patterns in the holes found in the ceiling material of school buildings.

I'm sure the ring of stars is a coincidence. It would be simple (for astrophysicists) to determine if it is lensing: the spectra of all the stars in the asterism would be identical. I'm sure if any astrophysicist ever thought that lensing was a possibility, a check would have been done long ago, and the caption would have said so.

Also, examples of lensing that I have seen tend to show circumferential smearing of the individual images; these images look sharp.

Is not having a central gravitational object, a necessity for gravitational lensing to take place? Looks more like a coincidence, as there are many stars in the field.

see link

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030127.html

making of holes, by jets from stars.