NASA and the ESA Hubble Space Telescope have once again discovered another wonder of the cosmic universe. This time, the space telescope captured a very rare event now known to astronomers as the “Melting Circle”.
Molten Circle (Einstein) (Image: NASA / Hubble)
The image, recently shared with NASA, reveals GAL-CLUS-022058s, Einstein’s ring located in the southern hemisphere constellation Fornax (the Furnace), about 60 million light-years from Earth. In a note on NASA’s website, ESA explains that the GAL-CLUS-022058s is “the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever found in our universe. “
Einstein’s rings were first coined by Einstein in his general theory of relativity. They are created by a gravity lens, a process that causes separations in light traveling from distant places due to the effects of gravity from an object placed in the center of the source and the observer of the light.
In an image of Einstein’s circle shared by NASA, the light from the background can be seen as distortion due to a gravity lens. The note with ESA mentions that this effect in this case is caused by the weight of the galaxy globe sitting in front of the back galaxy.
NASA
Moreover, the posterior galaxy is almost directly aligned with the elliptical galaxy in the center of the group seen in the center of this image. This causes the light from the background to warm up and so its image is enlarged “to an almost perfect ring. ”Additional splits are caused by the pressure from other galaxies in the cluster.
The resulting sight is like a “Melted Circle” so astronauts call it that. ESA says these are “separate laboratories” for studying galaxies that are too far away from Earth. Because the distance makes them faint in appearance, it is almost impossible to see these galleries without a gravity lens.