P13	February 1998

¹ Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique - Université de Liège, Avenue de Cointe 5, 4000 Liège, Belgium
² URA 173 CNRS-DAEC, Observatoire de Paris, F-92195 Meudon Principal cedex, France
³ European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile
⁴ Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
⁵ Palomar Observatory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
⁶ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Mail Stop 20, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA

^* Maître de Recherches FNRS, Belgium
^** Hubble Fellow

⁺ Based on observations obtained at ESO La Silla Observatory, Chile and at the W. M. Keck Observatory, Hawaii, which is operated jointly by the California Institute of Technology and the University of California.

Abstract

     New high quality Keck and ESO images of PKS 1830-211 are presented. Applying a powerful new deconvolution algorithm to this optical and infrared data, both images of the flat spectrum core of the radio source have been identified. An extended source is also detected in the optical images, consistent with the expected location of the lensing galaxy. The source counterparts are very red at I-K ~ 7, suggesting strong Galactic absorption with additional absorption by the lensing galaxy at z = 0.885, and consistent with the detection of high redshift molecules in the lens.