Thanks to the presence of a cosmic lens, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope got a close-up look at PLCK G045.1+61.1, a starburst galaxy located approximately 12 billion light-years away in the constellation of Boötes.
This Hubble image shows a massive galaxy cluster (center); along its borders reddish dots are visible; these are copies of the same galaxy called PLCK G045.1+61.1, which is 12 billion light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / B. Frye.
“PLCK G045.1+61.1 appears as multiple reddish dots near the center of the new image,” Hubble astronomers said.
“The galaxy is being gravitationally lensed by a cluster of closer galaxies that are also visible in this image.”
Galaxy clusters contain thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes and sizes.
Typically, they have a mass of about one million billion times the mass of the Sun and form over billions of years as smaller groups of galaxies slowly come together.
Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of general relativity that massive objects will deform the fabric of space itself.
When light passes one of these objects, such as a huge galaxy cluster, its path is changed slightly.
Called gravitational lensing, this effect is only visible in rare cases and only world’s best telescopes can observe the related phenomena.
Hubble’s sensitivity and high resolution allow it to see faint and distant gravitational lenses that cannot be detected with ground-based telescopes whose images are blurred by the atmosphere of our planet.
“From 2009 to 2013, ESA’s Planck space observatory captured multiple all-sky surveys,” the researchers said.
“In the course of these surveys, with complementary observations by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, Planck discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.”
“It was during the study of these Planck-Herschel selected sources using Hubble that the optical starlight emitted from PLCK G045.1+61.1 was found.”
