if the light from a distant star encounters a enough gravity it will bend in an arc around it... Right

 

Ho do we know that the light source is not right behind us or beside us somewhere at a much shorter distance

Edited October 31, 201114 yr by fleet1779

if the light from a distant star encounters a enough gravity it will bend in an arc around it... Right

 

Ho do we know that the light source is not right behind us or beside us somewhere at a much shorter distance

 

For some of the observations it's because the earth moves, so the light's path will encounter different (i.e. much, much smaller) gravitational fields at other times. So we can fix the location of the source.