Astronomers Amazed By Perfect 'Einstein Ring' Gleaming In Space

Astronomers have discovered a perfect ring of light in a galaxy 590 million light-years away. 'The phenomenon is known as an Einstein ring, and it was discovered circumscribing the galaxy NGC 6505 in data collected by the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope,' reports SpaceAlert. From the report: In the case of the newly discovered Einstein ring, the light that encircles the near galaxy is from a more distant galaxy, sitting some 4.42 billion light-years away, whose light has been warped by the curvature of space-time around NGC 6505. It's a very lucky arrangement of objects: they are aligned in such a way that the distant galaxy's light is stretched into a perfect ring, with brighter blobs representing replicated images of the galaxy at four points around the ring.

And the closeness of NGC 6505 makes it even more astonishing. Only five other lenses have been discovered so close; simulations suggest this new lens only had a 0.05 percent chance of existing, never mind being discovered. The more distant galaxy had never been seen before; now, scientists have the perfect tool to study it in greater detail than would be possible without the lens. The research has been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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