Our feeds have been swamped with breath-taking images of
space since the first James Webb Space Telescope images were published in July,
ranging from stunningly detailed images of Jupiter to the furthest distant
known star.
Webb has accomplished this feat once more, this time taking
a photo of an almost flawless Einstein ring at a distance of 12 billion
light-years. And we can’t look away from them.
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Image Credits: A colourized representation of a faraway Einstein ring. Spaceguy44/Reddit; JWST/MAST. |
Below is a colorized version of the photograph that
astronomy graduate student Spaceguy44 posted on Reddit.
According to Spaceguy44 on Reddit, an Einstein ring is
created when a distant galaxy gets enlarged and encircled by a massive galaxy
in front of it, forming an almost perfect ring.
The galaxy in question is called SPT-S J041839-4751.8 and is
12 billion light-years away.
A closer look at it is provided below, also edited by
Spaceguy44:
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(JWST/MAST; Spaceguy44/Reddit) Galaxy SPT-S J041839-4751.8 |
Spaceguy44 claims that if it weren’t for the Einstein ring,
we wouldn’t be able to observe this galaxy at all.
Einstein rings are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also
give us the opportunity to study these otherwise inaccessible galaxies.
The phenomenon is referred to as gravitational lensing since
Einstein foresaw it.
The alignment of the distant galaxy, the local magnifying
galaxy, and the observer (in this example, the Webb space telescope) is
required for the effect to take place.
If you want to try it yourself, Spaceguy44 says the base and
stem of a wine glass have a similar effect. See how the word zooms in by trying
it with a book page.
Although it is exceptional, it is not unheard of to observe
Einstein rings. Amazing Einstein rings have previously been captured by Hubble.
Webb has already photographed SPT-S J041839-Einstein
4751.8’s ring before.
The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) of the space telescope
captured the same area in August, and Spaceguy44 colored and released it at the
time.
The picture below, though, wasn’t as clear.
The information in the present image was collected by Webb’s
Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) camera and retrieved through the MAST interface.
The picture features three distinct filters. Light
wavelengths at 10m are collected by the red F1000W filter. The 7.7m wavelength
F770W filter is green. The F560W blue filter is used to identify 5.6m
wavelengths.
The photographs were then colored and aligned using astropy
by Spaceguy44 before being further edited in GIMP.