Gravitational Lensing
A Rogue Earth and Neptune Might Have Been Found in Older Data
Scientists have found what appear to be rogue planets hidden in old survey data. Their results are starting to define…
A Novel Propulsion System Would Hurl Hypervelocity Pellets at a Spacecraft to Speed it up
A new proposal for a pellet-beam spacecraft could enable interstellar missions and a Solar Gravitational Lens in a matter of…
In a New Hubble Image, Dark Matter Anchors the Giant Galaxy Cluster Abell 611
Dark matter. It's secret. It's dark because it doesn't give off any light. We can't see it, taste it, touch…
Webb and Hubble Work Together to Reveal This Spectacular Galaxy Pair — and Several Bonuses!
What’s better than a pair of galaxies observed by a pair of iconic space telescopes? The answer to that, according…
A Computer Algorithm is 88% Accurate in Finding Gravitational Lenses
Astronomers have been assessing a new machine learning algorithm to determine how reliable it is for finding gravitational lenses hidden…
Gravity Really Tangled up the Light From a Distant Quasar
Way back in 1979, astronomers spotted two nearly identical quasars that seemed close to each other in the sky. These…
Hubble Sees a Mirror Image of the Same Galaxy Thanks to Gravitational Lensing
It's been an amazing couple of weeks for fans of gravitational lensing. JWST grabbed the headlines with a spectacular infrared…
A Mission to Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 30 Years
NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts is famous for supporting outlandish ideas in the astronomy and space exploration fields. Since being…
Using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens Would Let Us See Exoplanets With Incredible Resolution
Have you ever seen wispy arcs and rings in astronomical images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories?…
Hubble Pins Down the Mass of a Potential Free-Floating Black Hole That’s 5,000 Light-Years Away
Earlier this year, astronomers used microlensing and the Hubble Space Telescope to detect, for the first time, a rogue black…