Most distant galaxy lens discovered

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy about 9.4 billion light-years from Earth that is magnifying the light of an even more distant galaxy. It’s the most distant gravitational lens found to date.

A gravitational lens is made from a pair of objects in which the light from the distant one interacts with the gravity of the closer one. If the objects are perfectly aligned an observer on Earth sees the photons from the distant object as a ring.

Describing the discovery October 16 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team of astronomers led by Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany report that the lensing galaxy is relatively light, young and bursting with new stars.

These characteristics are a bit peculiar and could mean that this type of starburst galaxy is more abundant in the young universe than previously thought. If so, then astronomers could have to re-think how galaxies evolved.