Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday.
The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco. The faraway galaxy creating the ring is more than 4 billion light-years away.
Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein. The process is known as gravitational lensing.
“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful,” lead author Conor O’Riordan of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.
Euclid rocketed from Florida in 2023. NASA is taking part in its mission to detect dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
(AP)
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3 Responses
590 million light-years away means that it took 590 million years for the light of those objects to travel back for us to be able to see it. Same thing with the 4 billion light-years away.
@theywnreader
No, that is not what it means.
It says that Hashem created the world perfectly.
If Adam wasn’t created as a baby, rather he existed from the first instant as a full grown adult, than why is it so hard for people to understand that Hashem created all these galaxies with their light already shining towards the most important part of creation, namely,planet earth
@741
Perhaps. There’s always a different angle to view a fact. Some view the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s death as proof that Moshiach will rise from the dead. But anyways I was just pointing out the mathematics and you can do what you want with it.