Gravitational lensing by galaxy in cluster IRC 0218

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the most distant cosmic lens yet found, a massive elliptical galaxy whose powerful gravity is magnifying the light from a faraway galaxy behind it.

The giant elliptical is one of the red objects in the top left of the image, identified in the annotated version.

The galaxy is seen as it appeared 9.6 billion years ago and is one of the brightest members in a distant cluster of galaxies, called IRC 0218. It is so massive that its enormous gravitational field deflects light passing through it, much as an optical lens bends light to form an image. This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, magnifies, brightens, and distorts images from faraway objects that might otherwise be too faint to observe even with the largest telescopes.

The image was made by combining visible-light observations from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and near-infrared exposures from the Wide Field Camera 3.

Links:

• NASA Press release
• Gravitational Lensing by Galaxy in Cluster IRC 0218 (annotated)
• IRC 0218 Lensing Feature
• IRC 0218 Lensing Feature Without Foreground Cluster