'Cosmic eye' observes universe

Scientists have used a Cosmic Eye to "look back in time" and glimpse a galaxy formation in the early Universe.

Using gravity from a galaxy in the foreground as an enormous zoom lens, researchers were able to see into the distant Universe.

The Cosmic Eye allowed scientists to observe a young star-forming galaxy, which lies about 11 billion light years from Earth, as it appeared just two billion years after the Big Bang.

Teams from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US and Durham and Cardiff Universities in the UK believe their findings show for the first time how the galaxy might evolve to become a spiral system like the Milky Way.

The Cosmic Eye is so called because the foreground galaxy, which is 2.2 billion light years from Earth, appears in the centre of an arc created by the distant galaxy - giving it the appearance of a human eye.

Its name also derives from its resemblance to the Eye of Horus, the ancient Egyptian symbol representing the god of the sky and the ruler of the world of the living.

The distant galaxy was originally identified using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists then used the 10 metre Keck telescope, in Hawaii, along with the magnifying effect of the gravitational field of the foreground galaxy to enlarge the distant galaxy by eight times.

Dr Dan Stark, of Caltech, who led the research, said: "Gravity has effectively provided us with an additional zoom lens, enabling us to study this distant galaxy on scales approaching only a few hundred light years.

"This is 10 times finer sampling than previously. As a result for the first time we can see that a typical-sized young galaxy is spinning and slowly evolving into a spiral galaxy much like our own Milky Way."

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