The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, launched in July 2023, is on a six-year mission to explore the evolution of the dark universe. Recently, the Euclid space telescope detected a rare Einstein ring – a halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy located 590 million light-years away. This particular galaxy has been known to astronomers for over a century, making the discovery of the glowing ring surprising and intriguing.
Valeria Pettorino, the Euclid project scientist at ESA, highlighted the power of the telescope in finding new phenomena even in well-known areas of space. The Einstein ring observed by Euclid is created by light from a distant galaxy bending perfectly around a closer object due to gravitational lensing, a process that distorts light thanks to gravity. The faraway galaxy responsible for the ring is over 4.4 billion light-years away, adding to the beauty and rarity of this particular observation.
Lead author Conor O’Riordan from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics described the Einstein ring as special and scientifically valuable due to its rare occurrence and close proximity to Earth. Euclid’s mission involves mapping a third of the sky and observing billions of galaxies to further our understanding of the dark universe. The discovery of the Einstein ring adds to the growing list of unique and important findings made by the Euclid space telescope since its launch.
Note: The image is for illustrative purposes only and is not the original image associated with the presented article. Due to copyright reasons, we are unable to use the original images. However, you can still enjoy the accurate and up-to-date content and information provided.
