“Einstein Ring” was first discovered in 1988.
The James Webb Telescope, deployed in space by American space agency NASA to clearly take photos of the great depths of the universe, has snapped a perfect shot of the “Einstein Ring”. The colourised picture was recently shared by a Reddit user.
Here are five facts about Einstein Ring:
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According to Science Direct, an “Einstein Ring” is created when the light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object en route to the Earth. Due to the effects of gravitation (called gravitational lensing), the light is diverted, which makes it seem to come from different places. If the light source, lens, and observer are all in perfect alignment, the light appears as a ring.
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The first example of an “Einstein Ring” was discovered in 1988.
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The bending of light was predicted by Alert Einstein, a few years before the publication of general relativity in 1916. An “Einstein Ring” is a special case of gravitational lensing.
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The ring of light captured by the James Webb telescope comes from a distant galaxy – SPT-S J041839-4751.8 – which lies around 12 billion light-years from Earth, a report in space.com said.
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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the predecessor of James Webb, had also captured images of several “Einstein Rings” but the latest one if the most detailed image because of the high-powered lenses installed in the new telescope.
