SDSSJ0946+1006

SDSSJ0946+1006 is an unusual gravitational lens system consisting of three galaxies at distances of respectively three, six, and eleven billion light years from Earth. In a report presented at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, researchers Raphael Gavazzi and Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Santa Barbara described the discovery of a double Einstein ring produced by the gravitational lensing of light from two distant galaxies. The observations were made using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The main lens lies at redshift, with the inner ring at with an Einstein radius  and magnitude , the outer ring is at z ≲ 6.9 with  and magnitude  The lensing galaxy is also known as SDSSJ0946+1006 L1, with the nearer lensed galaxy as SDSSJ0946+1006 S1, and the farther lensed galaxy SDSSJ0946+1006 S2.