Gravitational Lensing

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Amid a field of galaxies, a repeated, elongated red galaxy forms a shape like the top of a question mark, with another galaxy positioned like the question mark’s dot. In each occurrence, another white, clumpy galaxy with an overall circular shape appears perched on top of the red galaxy. A very bright foreground galaxy appears to the right of the bottom curve of the question mark shape. To the lower right, among other galaxies, another occurrence of the galaxy pair appears, unaffiliated with the question mark shape.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Distorted Galaxy Forming Cosmic Question Mark

5 min read

It’s 7 billion years ago, and the universe’s heyday of star formation is beginning to slow. What might our Milky…

Article2 months ago
This animated GIF shows how light is bent by massive objects that create dents in space-time. The first scene shows a white grid on a black background, which represents space-time. In the center is a star shown as a glowing yellow ball. The star creates a dent in the space-time grid, so the lines of the grid are curved under and around it. A line of yellow light comes down from the top of the image and arcs around the star. Then the scene changes to show the Hubble Space Telescope, a silver cylindrical object, in the bottom right of the image, pointed up toward the left. In the upper left is a fuzzy white blob with yellow lines moving toward Hubble. Between them, in the center, is a cluster of galaxies, depicted as several different-sized orange and white specs of light. As the yellow lines approach the galaxy cluster, they bend around it, ending up pointing toward the telescope.

How Gravity Warps Light

5 min read

Gravity is obviously pretty important. It holds your feet down to Earth so you don’t fly away into space, and…

Article1 year ago

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Two galaxies one right one on the left. right galaxy has a blue-white triangular star forming region surrounding it.

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