A fortuitous image taken by the Euclid Telescope of the European Space Agency allowed astronomers to detect a new and surprising example of an Einstein ring.
This extremely rare phenomenon occurs when a large spatial object acts as a lens and magnifies the light of another object directly behind it. This was predicted for the first time by the general theory of Einstein’s relativity, which describes how the seriousness of large objects, such as galaxies, deform the space tissue -time and alter the path of light.
If the alignment between the telescope, the object of the foreground and the background object is correct, the magnified light makes a ring.
An Einstein ring can help astronomers try hypothesis about the expansion of the universe, as well as the nature of dark matter and dark energy. However, less than 1,000 “strong lenses” of this type are known, and this new example is remarkably close to Earth.
Astronomers who work with the Euclid space telescope made the discovery during the early tests when the focusing images deliberately caught the attention of the scientist of that Bruno Altieri.
“Even from that first observation, I could see it,” says Altieri. “But after Euclid made more observations in the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring. For me, with a life interest in gravitational lens, that was incredible. ”
The galaxy that acts as a gravitational lens is called NCG 6505 and is 590 million light years from Earth, “a pull of cosmic stone,” say the authors. However, the light of the object that is magnifying is more than 4.4 billion light years away. This object has never been observed before and still does not have a name.
“It seems very intriguing that this ring has been observed within a well -known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” says Valeria Petorino, scientist of the ESA ESA project. “And yet, this ring was never observed before. This shows how powerful Euclid is, to find new things even in places that we thought we knew well. “
Euclid was launched on July 1, 2023, starting a 6 -year mission to study dark matter, dark energy and gravity. One of its objectives is to create a 3D map of the large -scale structure of the universe observing billions of galaxies in more than a third of the sky.
During their observations, ESA scientists expect the telescope to detect around 100,000 strong lenses, increasing the number known in two orders of magnitude and provides images of greater resolution of these phenomena.
“Euclid is going to revolutionize the field, with all these data that we have never had before,” says Conor O’Riordan, of the Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics, Germany and main author of the document.
While strong lenses such as Einstein’s rings are visually attractive and scientifically valuable, Euclid will focus on the most common phenomena of weak lenses. Instead of creating multiple images of a background object, the weak lens cause slight distortions of the background object. Measuring this effect will allow Euclid scientists to make a 3D map of dark matter in the universe.
Finding an Einstein ring so early in the Euclid Survey survey is reinforcing the scientific team. “This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities,” says Petorino.
The investigation is published In the newspaper, Astronomy and astrophysics.
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