Hubble image archive
Gravitational Lensing of Distant Galaxies
This diagram illustrates how gravitational lensing by foreground galaxies will influence the appearance of far more distant background galaxies. This means that as many as 20 percent of the most distant galaxies currently detected will appear brighter because their light is being...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2011
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2011-04-2812-image
This diagram illustrates how gravitational lensing by foreground galaxies will influence the appearance of far more distant background galaxies. This means that as many as 20 percent of the most distant galaxies currently detected will appear brighter because their light is being amplified by the effects of foreground intense gravitational fields.
The plane at far left contains background high-redshift galaxies. The middle plane contains foreground galaxies; their gravity amplifies the brightness of the background galaxies. The right plane shows how the field would look from Earth with the effects of gravitational lensing added. Distant galaxies that might otherwise be invisible appear due to lensing effects.
Credits
Illustration: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI);Science: NASA, ESA, S. Wyithe (University of Melbourne), H. Yan (Ohio State University), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and S. Mao (Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics, and National Astronomical Observatories of China)
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Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
View on NASA.gov