New Hubble Images and Notes on Gravitational Lensing

Cheesy videos that otherwise do a good job showing the improvements:


From Wikipedia: A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright source (such as a quasar) is "bent" around a massive object (such as a cluster of galaxies) between the source object and the observer. The process is known as gravitational lensing, and is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.


From some podcast I was listening to earlier this week: Einstein thought we would never be able to see gravitational lensing, be cause we are too damn small.


But, remember this image from the videos above? (Here it is embedded in a diagram showing how the image was distorted.)

Wow, we showed him, huh? I think Einstein forgives us for proving him wrong about our ability because by the very observation of this phenomenon, the Hubble helped prove some of his theories correct!