A galaxy is a collection of stars and interstellar matter held together by its own gravity. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way and is a spiral galaxy Shape Our Sun and solar system is located towards the edge of the disk. Graph summary looking at other galaxies, they do not have enough mass to create a gravity force strong enough to keep them from flying apart as they rotate. They looked for distortions from the circular shape and found the amount of matter needed to produce the distortions seen.
Light is bent by large gravitational fields.
If a dark object passes before a bright object, the bright object's light rays get bent and the object appears brighter. The gravitationally-lensed image appears as a red crescent to the lower right of center. The galaxy's image is brightened, magnified, and smeared into an arc-shape by the gravitational influence of the intervening galaxy cluster, which acts like a gigantic lens. Exact measurement of the distance from spectroscopic observations with the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii show the lensed galaxy is the farthest ever seen. This places the young galaxy as far as 13 billion light-years away.