One of the first images the James Webb Space Telescope ever captured was only possible thanks to a gravitational lens. Its latest is another example of this phenomenon, this time featuring a galaxy called the Cosmic Seahorse.
A pair of Stanford University astrophysicists have proposed a new way to use gravitational lensing that would be up to 1,000 times more precise than current methods. The hope is to use the concept to take better photos of distant planets.
In December of last year, Hubble captured a photo of a distant galaxy that, thanks to gravitational lensing, appeared almost as a perfect "Einstein Ring." A year later, astronomers revealed what they learned from examining the photo.
The Hubble Space Telescope in concert with the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile found what NASA describes as odd: early, massive, "dead" galaxies that have run out of the fuel necessary to continue to make stars.
Hubble, which just came back online after being down for a month, has captured this stunning photo of a galaxy that exists a staggering 10 billion light-years away. The telescope can see and focus this vast distance by leveraging the power of gravity.
The Hubble Space Telescope has an incredible camera system in its own right, but thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing it can capture images far beyond what human technology and optical science currently allow.