The K-band UFTI image at left shows the two "lensed" images of a distant, z=3.8 quasar Q1208+101. The two components are separated by only 0.45 arcseconds (thats about 1/10,000th of a degree on the sky!). Upgrades to UKIRT in the nineties mean that astronomers can now regularly see such fine detail in celestial objects, almost to the same degree as HST (the image at right is an H-band image of the same object taken by the space telescope)!

The light from the quasar is "bent" around a foreground galaxy producing the two sources seen here. For more details on Gravitational lenses see some of the other web pages available in this Gallery.

Our thanks to Olga Kuhn (JAC) for supplying these data. The HST image is from the CASTLES Survey webpage (C.S. Kochanek, E.E. Falco, C. Impey, J. Lehar, B. McLeod, H.-W. Rix): http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/castles