Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Giant Cluster Bends, Breaks Images

NASA ^ | August 23, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What are those strange blue objects? Many of the brightest blue images are of a single, unusual, beaded, blue, ring-like galaxy which just happens to line-up behind a giant cluster of galaxies. Cluster galaxies here typically appear yellow and -- together with the cluster's dark matter -- act as a gravitational lens. A gravitational lens can create several images of background galaxies, analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a distant street light. The distinctive shape of this background galaxy -- which is probably just forming -- has allowed astronomers to deduce that it has separate images at 4, 10, 11, and 12 o'clock, from the center of the cluster. A blue smudge near the cluster center is likely another image of the same background galaxy. In all, a recent analysis postulated that at least 33 images of 11 separate background galaxies are discernable. This spectacular photo of galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 from the Hubble Space Telescope was taken in November 2004.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Lee & H. Ford (Johns Hopkins U.)]

[SunkenCiv]

• A different edit, same everything else: 2009 August 23

The Big One

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[canuck_conservative]

Now THAT is cool!

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[uglybiker]

...analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a distant street light.

Or what that chick at the end of the bar looks like through the bottom of a beer glass at closing time.

[Impy]

Cosmic sperm cells? ;D

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Too many times to count I went to bed with Cindy Crawford and woke up with an ugly version of Rosie O’Donnell. Gives me chills.

[SunkenCiv]

Just be really sure it’s a chick, just sayin’.

[Paleo Pete]

Cool shot.

One of my old favorites is the Abell 1689 series, the first ones I found years ago, probably mid or late 90’s. Amazing the Albert Einstein predicted this and it took us this long to prove gravity could actually have a lens affect on distant objects...

Here is the main link to a search on the Hubble site for Abell images

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/query/abell/

Abell 1689, the first one I saw, the small red spots are galaxies approximately 10-13 billion light years away.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2003001a/

That many galaxies way out there is mind boggling...

[Rodamala]

A 2 at 10 is a 10 at 2.