How gravity magnifies the 'Shadow Blaster' galaxy

This animation illustrates gravitational lensing, where the immense gravity of a foreground galaxy bends spacetime and acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, enlarging and distorting the light from a more distant galaxy behind it. The lensed galaxy shown here, JCMT0402−0424—nicknamed “Shadow Blaster”—has been identified as the likely source of the high-energy neutrino event IC 210922A, detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in 2021. Credit: Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/R. Proctor Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)