The true nature of CSL-1

Abstract

On January 12 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope observed the peculiar double extragalactic object CSL-1, suspected to be the result of gravitational lensing by a cosmic string. The high resolution image shows that the object is actually a pair of interacting giant elliptical galaxies. In spite of the weird similarities of the energy and light distributions and of the radial velocities of the two components, CSL-1 is not the lensing of an elliptical galaxy by a cosmic string.

5 pages, 3 figures - Download postscript version for higher quality images High resolution version at: http://people.na.infn.it/~paolillo/publications.html Typos and affiliations corrected in new version