Latest Gravitational lens Stories
[WATCH VIDEO: Space Warps Gravitational Lensing Animation] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Volunteers are being summoned to help astronomers find "space warps," leading to the discovery of faraway objects. Space warps, more commonly known as "gravitational lenses," allow objects in space to act as a giant lens to other objects even farther away. Studies have found that the human brain is much better at identifying lenses than current computer algorithms, so...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers at the Kavli IPMU, led by Robert Quimby, have discovered the first ever Type Ia supernova (SNIa), extraordinarily magnified by a gravitational lens. Scientists wrote in the Astrophysics Journal Letters they discovered the supernova, PS1-10afx, with the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1). The supernova exploded over 9 billion years ago, making it a much further object than most studied...
ESA Cosmologists using data from ESA's Planck satellite have compiled the first all-sky image of the distribution of dark matter across the entire history of the Universe as seen projected on the sky. This is made possible by analyzing the tiny distortions imprinted on the photons of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by the gravitational lensing effect of massive cosmic structures. As photons traveled through these structures, which consist primarily of dark matter, their paths became...
Subaru Telescope In a course of studying young galaxies at a distance of 11.6 billion light years from Earth, a team of astronomers led by Professor Yoshiaki Taniguchi (Ehime University) noticed a strangely shaped galaxy that looks like a "magatama", an ancient, comma-shaped Japanese amulet made of stone. Subsequent research revealed that the magatama galaxy was actually an overlapping system of two young galaxies lying in an extremely close line of sight--an exceedingly rare occurrence...
WATCH VIDEO: [Gravitational Lensing of Distant Star-Forming Galaxies] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers reported in Nature and the Astrophysical Journal that starburst galaxies from early in the universe's history took place earlier than previously though. Scientists making observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope say they have found that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the universe actually took...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A 1970s classic video game character has photo-bombed a Hubble Space Telescope picture of the Abell 68 galaxy cluster. The alien from the computer game Space Invaders has shown up in an image of Abell 68, thanks to a little technique known as “gravitational lensing.” Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity helped scientists amplify the light that comes from very distant galaxies. Some images taken by the Hubble telescope...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope recently obtained a three-dimensional view of a distant gravitationally-lensed quasar and discovered complex structures inside outflows coming from the nucleus. The team used the large telescope to observe quasar SDSS J1029+2623, which sits 10 billion light-years away from Earth in the constellation Leo. By using the gravitational lensing technique, astronomers were able to look at this far away...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A new observation of Abell 520 using the Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers determine that the core of the galaxy cluster is not over-dense in dark matter after all. Astronomers earlier this year spotted an overabundance of dark matter in the heart of the galaxy cluster. This observation was puzzling because dark matter and galaxies should be anchored together. Scientists have evidence that dark matter is responsible...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers have found the most distant galaxy ever seen in the universe by using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy, and is observed at 420 million years after the big bang. MACS0647-JD offers a glimpse into what the universe was like when it was just three percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years old....
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- By combining the power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space, astronomers have set a new record for finding the most distant galaxy seen in the universe. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The farthest galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. But it offers a peek back into a time...
Latest Gravitational lens Reference Libraries
The Bullet Cluster is made up of two colliding clusters galaxies. According to a 2006 study, the Bullet Cluster also shows the best evidence for the existence of Dark Matter. From observations of galaxy cluster collisions it has been found that many show displacement between their center of visible matter and their gravitational potential. Each component, stars, gas, and dark matter, within a cluster pair behaves differently during a collision allowing for each to be studied separately....
The Abell 520 galaxy cluster is an strange structure formed by a major merger. Due to its odd and chaotic nature it has been given the nick-name the Train Wreck Cluster. The Dark Matter within the cluster does not act as expected like it does in other clusters, therefore, Abell 520 creates problems for many of the prevailing theories about Dark Matter. It also disrupts many alternative theories of modified gravity. Similar to the Bullet Cluster the gas contents and galaxies within the...
The cluster CL0024+17, located in Pisces, is a galaxy cluster that is allowing astronomers to probe the distribution of dark matter in space. Dark matter does not reflect light and therefore cannot be seen. It is only detectable by the way its gravity affects the lights around it. Using gravitational lensing astronomers observe the distorted light around the dark matter and are able to tell where it is located within a cluster. A dark matter ring found near the cluster's center, by...
Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) -- Massive compact halo objects, or MACHOs, are a type of astronomical body proposed as one possible explanation for the presence of dark matter in galactic halos. A MACHO is a small chunk of normal baryonic matter, far smaller than a star, which drifts through interstellar space unassociated with any solar system. Since MACHOs would not emit any light of their own, they would be very hard to detect. Recent work has suggested that MACHOs are not...
Gravitational Lens -- A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright object (such as a quasar) is "bent" around a massive object (such as a massive galaxy) between the bright object and the viewer. The process is known as gravitational lensing, and was one of the predictions made by Einstein's general relativity. Description In a gravitational lens, the gravity from the massive object bends light as a lens might. As a result, the path of the light from a...
