The giant cluster of elliptical galaxies gravitational field acts as a sort of magnifying glass

The giant cluster of elliptical galaxies in the centre of this image contains so much dark matter mass that its gravity bends light. This means that for very distant galaxies in the background, the cluster's gravitational field acts as a sort of magnifying glass, bending and concentrating the distant object's light towards Hubble. Using Abell 383, a team of astronomers have identified and studied a galaxy so far away we see it as it was less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Astronomers said on April 12, 2011 they believed the first galaxies formed just 200 million years after the Big Bang, a finding that challenges theories about how the Universe emerged from infancy into childhood.