Chasing 'hidden' galaxies (artist's impression)

Artist's impression showing a galaxy located between an observer on Earth and a background quasar that acts as a beacon. The light that travels from the quasar is intercepted by the foreground galaxy on its sightline, carrying out the galaxy's signature all the way to the observer. The sketch shows a side-on view of the system. The inset shows a face-on view of it, the same view captured (albeit with less detail) by the images taken with the SINFONI instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (see ESO Press Release eso0740).