Lensed Galaxy Arc in Galaxy Cluster RCS2 032727-132623

Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, this Hubble image provides a close-up look at a distant "magnified" galaxy. This is a striking example of gravitational lensing, where the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy bends and amplifies the light of a more distant background galaxy. In this image the light from a distant galaxy, nearly 10 billion light-years away, has been warped into a nearly 90-degree arc of light by the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623, located 5 billion light-years away. The background galaxy's image is over three times brighter than typically lensed galaxies.