A rare phenomenon called Einstein ring has recorded the Euclid space telescope and reveals the extreme deformation of the space by the gravity of a galaxy.

The dazzling image shows a nearby galaxy, the NGC 6505, surrounded by a perfect circle of light. The ring takes a look at a farthest galaxy, located just behind the NGC 6505, whose stellar light has been bent around the galaxy in the foreground.

“This is a beautiful, excellent, exciting and lucky find in our first data,” said Professor Stephen Serjeant, an astronomer at Open University.

“A Einstein ring as perfect as he is extremely rare. We can see a galaxy in the background through the distorted space and time of a very close galaxy in the spotlight. “

Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that light can be bent around huge objects in space, which means that galaxies can act as huge lenses. Einstein’s rings are a powerful tool for astronomers, because they reveal objects that would otherwise hide from the view and indicate the mass of the intermediate galaxy – including any hidden mass in the form of dark matter.

In this case, astronomers estimate that the galaxy in the spotlight comprises about 11% of dark matter. This is a relatively small fraction, since dark matter is believed to dominate the overall mass content of the universe.

The telescope will capture images of objects up to 10 billion light -years, but the last picture shows that its unparalleled capacity for sharp observations reveals new structures in the nearby universe. The NGC 6505 galaxy is about 590 meters of light years from Earth – a breath away from secular terms – and the anonymous background galaxy is 4.42 billion light years.

“I find it very interesting that this ring was observed in a well -known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” said Dr. Valeria Pettorino, a scientist at the ESA EUCLID program. “The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a long time. And yet this ring had never been observed before. This shows how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. “

Central Image: European Space Agency