JWST Snaps Rare Cosmic Phenomenon
- Editor OGN Daily
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Webb telescope's new photo perfectly illustrates gravitational lensing and reconfirms the genius of Albert Einstein.
Astronomers using the powerful $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope to survey distant galaxies spotted an unusual, chance phenomenon called an "Einstein ring." It's not an actual object, but a remarkable optical illusion.
"The picture features a rare cosmic phenomenon - an Einstein ring. What appears to be a single, strangely shaped galaxy is actually two galaxies far apart," says the European Space Agency.
The effect, created by "gravitational lensing" and theorized to exist by Albert Einstein (who predicted in 1911 that gravity could bend light), occurs when the mass of a foreground galaxy warps space and time, causing light emanating from the galaxy located in near-perfect alignment beyond it (from Webb's view in the cosmos) to become warped. The closer galaxy, in effect, creates a lens. In this image, the foreground object is a massive, egg-shaped elliptical galaxy, and in the background is a spiral galaxy that appears wrapped around the elliptical galaxy.
"Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see," ESA explained. Why? Because it's a clever way to combine the capability of the most powerful space telescope ever built with the natural magnifying power of the universe.
Einstein predicted that gravity would affect light just as it affects physical matter and proposed the idea as a test of his theory of general relativity. In 1919 astronomers in Sobral, Brazil, and on the small island of Principe off the West coast of Africa, confirmed the effect during a solar eclipse, noting that the light was being bent by the sun’s gravity.