Gravitationally lensed quasars
Monday, November 19, 2018 - 08:50
in Astronomy & Space
The path of light is bent by mass, an effect predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity, and when a massive galaxy or cluster lies along our line-of-sight to a more distant galaxy its matter will act as a lens to image the light from that object. So-called strong gravitational lensing creates highly distorted, magnified and often multiple images of a single source. (Strong lensing is distinct from weak lensing which results in modestly deformed shapes of background galaxies.)