Starship Asterisk*

Looking at today's picture I've a question about gravitational lensing. Seeing Abell in the center, is everything around it the result of lensing and showing us what is behind it? Are we seeing only galaxies behind it? or are some galaxies that we see in the pic simply those surrounding Abell? If we...

My interest began with a college course in Astronomy, an ongoing casual interest in NASA and its accomplishments, then Feynman's books and on-line lectures, and then wonderful Hubble. Hubble really jump-started an intense interest that has led me to follow cosmology in general and also develop an in...