 Gravitational Lensing in ActionThis illustration shows a phenomenon known asgravitational lensing, which is used by astronomers to study very distant and very faint galaxies. Note that the scale has been greatly exaggerated in this diagram. In reality, the distant galaxy is much further away and much smaller.Lensing clusters are clusters of elliptical galaxies whose gravity is so strong that they bend the light from the galaxies behind them. This produces distorted, and often multiple images of the background galaxy. But despite this distortion, gravitational lenses allow for greatly improved observations as the gravity bends the light’s path towards Hubble, amplifying the light and making otherwise invisible objects observable. |
Gravitational Lensing in Action
