Gravitational Lensing of Quasar J0439+1634 (IMAGE)
Caption
The light from quasar J0439+1634, some 12.8 billion light years away, passes close to a faint galaxy that is about six billion light years away. The gravity of this foreground galaxy warps the space around it, according Einstein's theory of general relativity. This bends the light like an optical lens, magnifies the quasar image by a factor of fifty, while at the same time split the quasar image into three. Both the foreground galaxy and the multiply imaged quasar is captured by the high resolution image of the Hubble SpaceTelescope. Ground-based telescopes, including the MMT, Keck, Gemini, LBT and JCMT, are used to observe this object in optical, infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths to measure its distance, and to characterize its central black hole and host galaxy.
Credit
NASA, ESA, Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona)
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