How far away is the Cosmic Horseshoe? Its foreground lens galaxy lies at redshift z=0.444, roughly five billion light-years away. The locator uses the measured J2000 sky position and the rounded light-travel distance to show that scale directly.
The locator places the Cosmic Horseshoe lens galaxy at its approximate five-billion-light-year light-travel distance. The open ring is an enlarged locator symbol, not the black hole or Einstein ring at physical scale.
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