This
image shows a Cosmic Eye created by two distant galaxies, as seen
by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Also
known as LBG J2135-0102, the Cosmic Eye bears a strong resemblance to the
Egyptian Eye of Horus. The illusion arises from a galaxy sitting 2.2 billion
light-years from Earth, which appears in the center of an arc created by an
even more distant galaxy 11 billion light-years away.
Researchers
have taken advantage of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing to study
the more distant galaxy. The gravitational field of the foreground galaxy has
magnified the distant galaxy by eight times, and now a team has used the Keck
telescope in Hawaii to further focus on the galaxy as it appeared two billion
years following the Big Bang.
— W.M. Keck Observatory/Durham
University/Caltech and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble
Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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