These Hubble Space Telescope images reveal 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 the red object in the enlarged view at left. Its red color comes from the light from older stars. 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. The background image shows the entire region surrounding the galaxy.
In the enlarged view, the lighter-colored blobs at upper right and lower left are the distorted and magnified shapes of a more distant spiral galaxy behind the foreground elliptical. The giant elliptical 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.
Astronomers needed spectroscopy to determine that the blobby features were two images of the same distant galaxy, located 10.7 billion light-years from Earth. In the enlarged view at right, astronomers have subtracted the image of the giant red elliptical to show the more distant spiral galaxy. The glow of young stars makes the galaxy appear blue. The white area at upper right is probably a region of star formation.
The images were made by combining visible-light observations from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and near-infrared exposures from the Wide Field Camera 3.
Credits
NASA, ESA, K.-V. Tran (Texas A&M University), and K. Wong (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | IRC 0218 |
| Object Description | Gravitational Lensing Cluster of Galaxies |
| R.A. Position | 3h 32m 38s.5 |
| Dec. Position | -05° 10' 19".9 |
| Constellation | Eridanus |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from the following proposal: , PI: C. Popovich (Texas A & M University) et al. The science team comprises: K. Wong (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Taiwan), K.-V. Tran (Texas A&M University), S. Suyu (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Taiwan), I. Momcheva (Yale University), G. Brammer (STScI), M. Brodwin (University of Missouri), A. Gonzalez (University of Florida), A. Halkola and G. Kacprzak (Swinburne University), A. Koekemoer (STScI), and C. Papovich (Texas A&M University). |
| Instrument | HST>ACS/WFC and HST>WFC3/IR |
| Exposure Dates | November and December 2011, Exposure Time: 3.3 hours |
| Filters | ACS/WFC: F475W (g) and F814W (I) WFC3/IR: F105W (Y), F125W (J), and F160W (H) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS/WFC and WFC3/IR instruments. Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image as follows: Blue: F475W (g) Green: F814W (I) Red: F105W (Y) + F125W (J) + F160W (H) |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
