Six-Image CLASS Gravitational Lens

This object was discovered during the third phase of the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS), an international collaboration that searches for new cases of gravitational lensing among compact radio sources. This is a composite image showing the Hubble Space Telescope image of the gravitational lens system B1359+154, and six VLBA images of the lensed background radio source. The white objects are the multiple lensed images of the background galaxy, more than 11 billion light-years away. The orange objects are images of the three galaxies some 7 billion light-years away whose gravity is bending the light from the background galaxy to produce the multiple images. This is the first arcsecond-scale system in which a source is lensed into more than four detectable images.

VLBA images (15 x 15 milliarcsecond boxes) made from a 10-hour observation at 1.7 GHZ. HST image (2.9 x 2.9 arcsec) made from a 5000 second observation in the I band.

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

CLASS B1359+154

Rusin et al., ESA, STScI

D. Rusin, C. Kochanek, M. Norbury, E. Falco, C. Impey, J. Lehar, B. McLeod, H.-W. Rix, C. Keeton, J. Munoz, C. Peng

Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)

HST

2000-00-00

continuum

L

20 cm

1.4 GHz

RA 14:1:35.600, Dec: 15:13:25.000 (J2000)

0.000800 x 0.000800 degrees

Contact the archivist for a high resolution tif of this image.

Miscellaneous Series

Cosmology Unit