Hubble Captures a 'Five-star' Rated Gravitational Lens (IMAGE)

ESA/Hubble Information Centre

Hubble Captures a 'Five-star' Rated Gravitational Lens

Caption

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the first-ever picture of a distant quasar lensed into five images. The group of five quasar images produced in a process called gravitational lensing, in which the gravitational field of a massive object - in this case, a cluster of galaxies - bends and amplifies light from an object - in this case, a quasar � farther behind it.

Credit

European Space Agency, NASA, Keren Sharon (Tel-Aviv University) and Eran Ofek (CalTech)

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