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PHOTO CAPTION:

FOR RELEASE: July 30, 1997

PHOTO CAPTION NO.: STScI-PRC97-25


HUBBLE ASTRONOMERS USE LENS IN NATURE
TO UNCOVER MOST DISTANT GALAXY IN THE UNIVERSE


[LEFT]
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster CL1358+62 has
uncovered a gravitationally-lensed image of a more distant galaxy located far
beyond the cluster. The gravitationally-lensed image appears as a red
crescent to the lower right of center. The galaxy's image is brightened,
magnified, and smeared into an arc-shape by the gravitational influence
of the intervening galaxy cluster, which acts like a gigantic lens.

Exact measurement of the distance from spectroscopic observations with
the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii show the lensed galaxy is the farthest
ever seen. Its light is only reaching us now from a time when the universe
was but 7% its current age of approximately 14 billion years. This places
the young galaxy as far as 13 billion light-years away. The lensing
foreground cluster is 5 billion light-years from us.

[UPPER RIGHT]
A close-up of the gravitationally-lensed image shows why astronomers
are excited about this unique opportunity to study the distant galaxy's
structure. The stretched-out image reveals tiny knots of vigorous starbirth
activity. This provides a first detailed look at the early construction phase
of a galaxy undergoing formation.


[LOWER RIGHT]
A theoretical model of the cluster lens is used to "unsmear" the
gravitationally-lensed image back into the galaxy's normal appearance.
The corrected image gives a highly magnified view of the distant galaxy
with detail 5-10 times smaller than Hubble alone can provide. It clearly shows
several bright, very compact regions of intense star formation. These
starburst regions are as 700 light-years across. The knots are so bright they
indicate bursts of star formation taking place at a much faster rate than seen
in most galaxies at the present time.

The image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 on
January 13, 1996. The true color rendition was created from separate
exposures taken through a red and a near-infrared filter (the F606W
and F814W filters). The image on the left is 64 arcseconds wide,
that on the upper right is 10 arcseconds wide, while that at lower
right is only 2 arcseconds wide.

Credit: Marijn Franx (University of Groningen, The Netherlands),
Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), and NASA


Image files in GIF and JPEG format and captions may be accessed on the
Internet via anonymous ftp from oposite.stsci.edu in /pubinfo.

GIF JPEG
PRC97-25 Gravitational Lens gif/grlz492.gif jpeg/grlz492.jpg

Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG) of the release photograph
are available in /pubinfo/hrtemp: 97-25.jpg (color) and 97-25bw.jpg (black
& white).

GIF and JPEG images, captions and press release text are available via the
World Wide Web at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/25.html and via
links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.