European Telescope Discovers ‘Einstein Ring’ in Nearby Galaxy

01Scientists say Europe's Euclid Space Telescope has discovered a bright ring of light circling a nearby galaxy.

02The observed light is known as an Einstein ring.

03Researchers have estimated the ring encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away from Earth.

04A light-year is the distance light travels in a year about 9.5 trillion kilometers.

05Astronomers have long known about the galaxy where the ring was discovered, so they were surprised that the bright ring had not been identified before.

06It was discovered in a well-studied galaxy called NGC 6505.

07It is in the constellation, a group of stars, named Draco.

08Einstein rings are rare.

09They form when light from a more distant galaxy bends around a closer galaxy.

10The nearer galaxy appears to have a circle of light or a halo around it.

11The Einstein ring gets its name from physicist Albert Einstein.

12Einstein predicted that light would bend around extremely massive objects in space.

13This is called gravitational lensing.

14The American Space Agency NASA explains that as light passes through a gravitational lens, it may take different paths, producing multiple images of the same object.

15In this way, gravity itself acts as a lens magnifying and distorting space and time in a way that is similar to an optical lens, like those in eyeglasses or contact lenses.

16Gravitational lenses permit telescopes like Euclid to observe more distant and less bright objects.

17In the latest project, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics used data from Euclid to create a computer model to discover the Einstein ring.

18The Euclid Space Telescope is operated by the European Space Agency, ESA.

19In 2023, it launched on a six-year mission that ESA officials have said aims to study the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy across the universe.

20Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute are leading the research.

21In a statement, the organization said the first sign that the Einstein ring existed came during testing right after Euclid was deployed.

22A team member, Bruno Altieri, was looking over early data collected by Euclid.

23Even from that first observation, I could see it, Altieri said in a statement.

24But after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring.

25For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing.

26The scientists said the more distant galaxy involved in the method is about 4.4 billion light-years away from Earth.

27They noted that the more distant galaxy had never been observed before and does not have a name.

28Altieri's team recently reported the findings in a study in the publication Astronomy and Astrophysics.

29Connor O'Riordan is another team member from the Max Planck Institute and was the lead writer of the study.

30He said, All strong lenses are special because they're so rare, and they're incredibly useful scientifically.

31This one is particularly special because it's so close to Earth, and the alignment makes it very beautiful.

32O'Riordan added that the researchers used the latest gravitational lensing methods developed at the Institute.

33This permitted them to model the light of the ring.

34We even had to look at some of the raw data to better understand how the detector works.

35O'Riordan said the team's modeling operations were just the first step in studying the newly discovered Einstein ring.

36He said the group plans to use the ring to also study dark matter substructures within the lensing galaxy.

37O'Riordan predicted Euclid is going to revolutionize the field with all this data we've never had before.

38I'm Brian Lynn.