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Gravitational lensing around GC Abell 2218
      #1128401 - 03/08/08 11:18 AM

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I found that Sky has a high resolution of this phenomenon in color embedded in the image database. But there seems to be no placemark link to it. I have attached a wider field view, in black and white, over the color imagery.

Source

Quote:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope imaged a phenomenon called gravitational lensing in Abell 2218, a massive galaxy cluster some 2 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco. The cluster was imaged in full color, providing astronomers with a spectacular view of the early universe.

The Abell 2218 cluster is so massive and compact that light rays passing through it are deflected by its enormous gravitational field, much as an optical lens bends light to form an image. The gravitational field magnifies, brightens, and distorts images of objects that lie far beyond the cluster. This provides a powerful "telephoto lens" for viewing galaxies that are so far away they could not normally be observed.

In this image, the arc-like pattern is caused by the cluster's powerful gravitational field. The arcs are actually distorted images of very distant galaxies-some 5 to 10 times farther away than the lensing cluster. These remote galaxies are being magnified by the gravitational lens. The arcs provide a direct glimpse of how star-forming regions are distributed in remote galaxies as well as other clues to the early evolution of galaxies. This picture also reveals multiple imaging, a rarer lensing event that happens when the distortion is large enough to produce more than one image of the same galaxy.







Credit: NASA, A. Fruchter and the ERO Team (STScI, ST-ECF) Source

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