Extremely rare ‘Einstein ring’ discovered around galaxy 500,000,000 light years away
The Euclid space telescope, owned by the European Space Agency, has spotted an extremely rare sight over 500,000,000 light-years away - the sight of an 'Einstein ring' that has stunned many scientists.
Space telescopes allow researchers to glimpse into the far reaches of the universe, discovering unlikely pools of water or 'centaurs' that could perhaps explain the origins of space as we know it, and it still continues to discover rare sights every single year.
Among these sights are events that scientists have theorized and speculated on but are rarely found out in the wild, and this particular new discovery was originally proposed by one Albert Einstein back in 1915 with the theory of relativity.
It is indeed an 'Einstein ring' that was spotted using the Euclid telescope, as reported by Popular Science, and a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines what it is and why it's so rare.
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"In a galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing, the light from a distant source galaxy is distorted and magnified by the gravitational field of a foreground lens galaxy, such that multiple images of the source galaxy are formed," explains the study.
"When the source is resolved, that is, not point-like, and close to the projected center of the lens in the source plane a so-called 'Einstein ring' is formed."
In short, Einstein rings are formed when two separate galaxies are identically aligned through a fixed perspective, causing the path of light around it to form a 'halo' around the foreground galaxy, as if it was 'bent' by a lens.
These are significant not only because of how incredibly rare they are to find, but also because they can often help researchers discover hidden galaxies that would otherwise be impossible for us to find.
It also assists physicists in the understanding of 'invisible' dark energy and dark matter, which have helped contribute to theories that suggest the existence of mirror universes that are moving backwards in time towards the Big Bang.
This particular find was located at the NGC 6505 galaxy, around 500 million light-years away. While this might seem like an incomprehensible distance, it's actually relatively close to Earth which is why this is even more significant.
It's understood that the 'distant source' galaxy, meaning the one that's causing the Einstein ring, is around 4.42 billion light-years away, and is far more luminous that NGC 6505.
This was previously not known to researchers, and thus does not currently have a name or any other information, making this quite the major find. On top of this, it's simply quite a beautiful image for the Euclid to have captured, showing the wonders of space in action.