The NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed a peculiar gravitationally lensed galaxy, classified as SGAS J143845+145407. This phenomenon essentially resulted in a mirror image of the galaxy that you see at the center of this image, and occurs when a gargantuan celestial body causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent.
A gravitational lens is basically the body causing the light to curve, while the distorted background object is referred to as being “lensed”. When this happens, it can result in multiple images of the original galaxy, as you see here, or in the background object appearing as a distorted arc or ring. It also results in magnification, thus enabling astronomers to study objects that would otherwise be too far away or too faint to be visible. Unfortunately, this camera-inspired house isn’t quite powerful enough to capture SGAS J143845+145407.
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This particular lensed galaxy is from a set of Hubble observations that take advantage of gravitational lensing to peer inside galaxies in the early Universe. The lensing reveals details of distant galaxies that would otherwise be unobtainable, and this allows astronomers to determine star formation in early galaxies,” said the European Space Agency.
