The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured an image of a gravitationally lensed galaxy. The result was a spectacular picture that featured a mirror image of the galaxy in the centre. Such gravitational lensing takes place when huge celestial bodies like a galaxy cluster causes the light passing though it to bend. The body works as a lens by bending the light and hence it is called a gravitational lens while the object which appears distorted due to it is said to be lensed.

Like the recent image released by the Hubble Telescope, gravitational lensing can lead to the formation of multiple images of the original galaxy, or can make the background object look like distorted arc or a ring.

Besides distorting, gravitational lensing also tends to magnify the object. This comes in handy for the astronomers as the lensing makes distant objects visible that would be otherwise out of sight.

The recently taken picture is among the set of observations made by the Hubble Telescope. Here, the telescope takes advantage of gravitational lensing to get a deeper look into galaxies present in the early universe. The lensing sheds light on the details of galaxies in the early universe and could also enable astronomers to study star formation in early galaxies. In turn, the lensing helps scientists gain a better insight into the overall evolution of the galaxies.

The Hubble Telescope is quite capable of detecting lensed galaxies due to its sensitivity and incredible vision. This allows the telescope to spot even the faintest and distant gravitational lenses. Ground-based telescopes cannot be used to carry out the task as the vision gets affected by the blurry effect of Earth’s atmosphere.