Hubble's Top Ten Gravitational Lenses
Depicts: HST 01248+0351
HST 01247+0352
HST 15433+5352
HST 16302+8230
HST 14176+5226
HST 12531-2914
HST 14164+5215
HST 16309+8230
HST 12368+6212
HST 18078+4600
Copyright: Kavan Ratnatunga (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) and NASA
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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope serendipitous survey of the sky has uncovered exotic patterns, rings, arcs and crosses that are all optical mirages produced by a gravitational lens, nature's equivalent of having giant magnifying glass in space. Shown are the top 10 lens candidates uncovered in the deepest 100 Hubble fields. Hubble's sensitivity and high resolution allow it to see faint and distant lenses that cannot be detected with ground-based telescopes whose images are blurred by Earth's atmosphere.
Last Update: 1 September 2019