(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) EINSTEIN RING

(MARCH-2025)

EINSTEIN RING

European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope has discovered a rare ring of light, known as an Einstein ring, around a galaxy nearly 590 million light-years away from Earth.

Key Details

Photos, which were taken by Euclid in September 2023, of the Einstein ring show a bright ball of light in the centre with a bright, cloudy ring around it.
The ring was discovered around NGC 6505, a galaxy that was first found in the 19th Century.

Einstein Ring

An Einstein ring is a ring of light around a form of dark matter, galaxy or cluster of galaxies. It is essentially an example of gravitational lensing.
Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon which occurs when a massive celestial body — such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies — creates a gravitational field which distorts and amplifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight.
The body causing the light to curve is called a gravitational lens.
Einstein rings are named after mathematician and physicist Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity predicted that light could bend and brighten around objects across the cosmos.
The first Einstein ring was discovered in 1987, and since then, several more have been discovered.

Features

Bending of Light: Caused by the warping of spacetime around massive objects as described by general relativity.
Ring Diameter: The size of the Einstein ring depends on the mass of the lens and the distances between the observer, the lens, and the background source.
Magnification Effect: The gravitational lensing magnifies the background source, allowing astronomers to study distant objects in greater detail than would otherwise be possible.
Einstein rings are not visible to the naked eye and can be observed only through space telescopes such as Euclid.