PGC 1470080

PGC 1470080 is a type E elliptical galaxy located in the Boötes constellation. It is located 3 billion light-years away from the Solar System and has a diameter of 571,000 light-years, making it a type-cD galaxy and one of the largest.

Characteristics
It is the brightest cluster galaxy of the galaxy cluster, WHL J143845.0+145412. The galaxy acts as a gravitational lens for a much more distant spiral galaxy which is called SGAS J143845+145407. This creates a mirror image of the galaxy thus creating a masterpiece.

Such of this phenomenon occurs, when a massive celestial body such as a galaxy cluster which creates sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light to be bent by the lens. This creates multiple images of the original galaxy which as seen, the background object appears as a distorted arc or a ring.

This observation takes advantage of gravitational lensing to peer through early universe galaxies. It helps to reveal details of distant galaxies that is unobtainable and allowing astronomers to determine star formation in such early galaxies. Not to mention, it gives scientists a better insight on how evolution of galaxies have unfolded. By using gravitational lensing is also a very useful tool which contributes significant new results in areas as different as the cosmological distance scale, dark matter in halos and galaxy structures.

According to the Hubble image of PGC 1470080, it is shown to be a peculiar lenticular galaxy rather than an elliptical galaxy as expected.