I have been thinking about these amazing images of ancient galaxies we can see because of gravitational lensing. Some of them even have multiple images of the same galaxy in two different places around the lens. We know that with some traditional glass lenses we can reverse the image backwards out of the lens in the direction it came.
Is it possible to see our home galaxy the Milky Way as an image from a gravitational lens refracted back toward us? What would it take to be able to identify and confirm it was actually the Milky Way? I imagine the image would be of the Milky Way many millions of years in the past simply because of the distance such an image would have to travel.
Is there any ongoing research in this field?
