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Gravitational lensing.

A massive cluster of yellowish galaxies, seemingly caught in a red and blue spider web of eerily distorted background galaxies, makes for a spellbinding picture from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. To make this image, Hubble peered straight through the center of one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, called Abell 1689.

The gravity of the cluster's stars, plus dark matter, acts as a 2-million-light-year-wide "lens" in space. This "gravitational lens" bends and magnifies the light of the galaxies located far behind it. Some of the faintest arcs in this image are background galaxies over 13 billion light-years away.

The most prominent lensing effect is the long blue arc, just above, and to the left of, centre.

The picture is an exquisite demonstration of Albert Einstein's prediction that gravity warps space and distorts beams of light. The image is a composite of visible-light and near-infrared exposures taken in June 2002.

CREDIT: NASA, N. Benitez (JHU), T. Broadhurst (Racah Institute of Physics/The Hebrew University), H. Ford (JHU), M. Clampin (STScI),G. Hartig (STScI), G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory), the ACS Science Team and ESA
SOURCE: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/01/image/a
COPYRIGHT: “Unless otherwise specifically stated, no claim to copyright is being asserted by STScI and it may be freely used as in the public domain in accordance with NASA's contract. However, it is requested that in any subsequent use of this work NASA and STScI be given appropriate acknowledgement.”

PREPARED BY Adrian Pingstone in December 2003.

This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy).

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