Astronomy Picture of the Day

Only 4 billion light years....I might miss the next one. Very cool

LTC Stephen F. SP5 Mark Kuzinski COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter Maj William W. 'Bill' PriceCPL Dave Hoover SSG William Jones Sgt Vance Bonds SGT (Join to see) Cpl (Join to see) SGT Rick Colburn PO1 H Gene Lawrence Maj Robert Thornton PO3 Bob McCord SPC Douglas Bolton CWO3 Dennis M. Lt Col Charlie Brown TSgt Joe C. PO3 Craig Phillips CW5 Jack Cardwell

Thank you, my friend Maj William W. 'Bill' Price for sharing the daily NASA picture for March 19, 2009 "Abell 370: Galaxy Cluster Gravitational Lens "
Image: Abell 370 _ Galaxy Cluster Gravitational Lens taken by Hubble, processing & copyright held by: Rogelio Bernal Andreo
"Explanation: What are those strange arcs? While imaging the cluster of galaxies Abell 370, astronomers noticed an unusual arc. The arc wasn't understood right away -- not until better images showed that the arc was a previously unseen type of astrophysical artifact of a gravitational lens, where the lens was the center of an entire cluster of galaxies. Today, we know that this arc, the brightest arc in the cluster, actually consists of two distorted images of a fairly normal galaxy that happens to lie far in the distance. Abell 370's gravity caused the background galaxies' light -- and others -- to spread out and come to the observer along multiple paths, not unlike a distant light appears through the stem of a wine glass. Almost all of the yellow images featured here are galaxies in the Abell 370 cluster. An astute eye can pick up many strange arcs and distorted arclets, however, that are actually gravitationally lensed images of distant normal galaxies. Studying Abell 370 and its images gives astronomers a unique window into the distribution of normal and dark matter in galaxy clusters and the universe."
Thank you, my friends Maj Marty Hogan and TSgt Joe C. for mentioning me.
FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones [

Gravitational lensing photos are cool. If you don’t mind I would like to find one I saw once which was really nice. There are a lot of lensing photos in this group and I had never seen this picture before.
Lensing was one of those things I grasped on an intuitive level immediately and it makes for some excellent pictures. (Alas not with a backyard telescope however.)