Hubble sees giant lensed galaxy arc
Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, this is a close-up look at the brightest distant "magnified" galaxy in the Universe known to date. It is one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, where the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy bends and amplifies the light of a more distant background galaxy. In this image the light from a distant galaxy, nearly 10 billion light-years away, has been warped into a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. The galaxy cluster lies 5 billion light-years away. The background galaxy's image is over three times brighter than typically lensed galaxies. The natural-colour image was taken in March 2011 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.
Credit:
About the Image
NASA caption
| Id: | opo1208a |
| Type: | Observation |
| Release date: | 8 February 2012, 13:46 |
| Size: | 1971 x 1332 px |
About the Object
| Name: | RCS2 032727-132623, RCSGA 032727-132609 |
| Type: | • Early Universe : Galaxy : Grouping : Cluster • Cosmology Images/Videos |
Colours & filters
| Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
| Optical U |
400 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Optical V |
590 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Optical I |
833 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Infrared Blue grism reference |
986 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Infrared J |
1.248 μm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Infrared H |
1.315 μm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
| Infrared H |
1.536 μm | Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 |
