HEIDELBERG, Germany, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- German-led astronomers say they've used a "cosmic lens" to watch the violent assembly of a young galaxy in the early universe.
The scientists led by Dominik Riechers of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, used the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth, seen as it was when the universe was only about 15 percent of its current age.
Between that galaxy and Earth lies another distant galaxy that is so perfectly aligned along the line of sight that its gravity bends light and radio waves from the farther object into a circle called an "Einstein Ring." It was that gravitational lens that made it possible for the scientists to learn details of the young, distant galaxy that would otherwise have been unobtainable.
"Nature provided us with a magnifying glass to peer into the workings of a nascent galaxy, providing an exciting look at the violent, messy process of building galaxies in the early history of the universe," said Riechers.
The astronomers report their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.
