Gravity distorts space in strange and unintuitive ways, and the larger the source of gravity, the greater the deformation. An example of an optical illusion called gravity is a beautiful ring in space Einstein ring, one of which was recently captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Named for the physicist who predicted the strange influence of gravity in space, studying rings like the astronomers shown below can help look far into the distance and see galaxies as they were seen more than 9 billion years ago.
The object may look like a ring, but the light source is actually a normal ancient galaxy. The ring shape is formed due to a phenomenon called Gravity lenswhere the light of a distant galaxy is distorted by the gravity of a cluster of galaxies between us and that galaxy.
This phenomenon not only changes the apparent shape of the galaxy, but also enlarges and brightens it. The galaxy appears 20 times brighter because of the lens flare, which allowed Hubble to photograph it with the equivalent of a giant 48-meter telescope.
This particular ring is officially known as GAL-CLUS-022058s, but it also has a slang nickname: The Molten Ring, located right in the constellation Fornax (furnace). The image was shared as the Hubble Image of the Week last December, and since then researchers have also studied the ring using other tools such as the FORS instrument from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
By looking at these rings, researchers can learn about galaxies very far away and effectively look back when the universe was less than half its current age. This time is a busy and active time with many stars being born.
“The lens galaxy is one of the brightest galaxies in the millimeter wavelength range.” on the phone one of the authors, Helmut Dannerbauer of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Spain. “Our research also shows that they are normal star-forming galaxies (the so-called main sequence galaxies) in the star-forming climax of the universe.”
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