Scientists using the Euclid space telescope have detected a rare Einstein ring around a nearby galaxy. The ring, formed by light bending around a closer galaxy, surrounds a galaxy 590 million light years away from Earth. The discovery was made possible by the latest gravitational lensing methods developed at Germany’s Max Planck Institute.
The Einstein ring gets its name from physicist Albert Einstein, who predicted that light would bend around massive objects in space. This phenomenon is known as “gravitational lensing.” According to NASA, gravity acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting space and time.
The team of researchers, led by Bruno Altieri, used data from Euclid to create a computer model to discover the ring. They noticed the first sign of the ring during testing after Euclid was deployed. After more observations, they confirmed the presence of a perfect Einstein ring.
The discovered galaxy is about 4.4 billion light years away from Earth and has not been observed before. The team plans to use the ring to study “dark matter substructures” within the lensing galaxy using the latest gravitational lensing methods developed at the Max Planck Institute.
Source: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/european-telescope-discovers-einstein-ring-in-nearby-galaxy/7972838.html