Since the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope appeared published in July, our feeds have been flooded with mind-blowing images from space, from crazy Detailed images of Jupiter to me The most distant known star.
Now, Webb has done it again, this time snapping up the near-perfect Einstein ring about 12 billion light-years away. And we can’t stop looking.
You can see the color image, which was shared by astronomy graduate student Spaceguy44 on Redditless.
As Spaceguy44 explains on Reddit, an Einstein ring occurs when a distant galaxy approaches and is wrapped into an almost complete ring by a massive galaxy in front of it.
The galaxy in question is called SPT-S J041839-4751.8, and it’s a whopping 12 billion light-years across.
Here’s a further look, also hosted by Spaceguy44:
Galaxy SPT-S J041839-4751.8. (JWST/MAST; Spaceguy44/Reddit)
According to Spaceguy44, we would never have seen this galaxy without the Einstein ring.
And the presence of the Einstein rings, in addition to their beautiful appearance, allows us to study these galaxies, otherwise it is almost impossible to see them.
This process is known as gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by Einstein, hence the name.
The effect only occurs when the distant galaxy, the nearest magnifying galaxy, and the observer (in this case the Webb Space Telescope) are aligned.
If you want to try it yourself, Spaceguy44 says that the stem and base of a wine glass create a similar effect. Try doing this with a book page and see the word expanded.
Although Einstein episodes are rarely seen, this is almost unheard of. Hubble has already captured images of Einstein’s amazing rings.
This is not the first time Webb has captured an Einstein ring from SPT-S J041839-4751.8.
The space telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captured the same area in August, and was also painted and released by Spaceguy44.
But the picture below was not clear.
Near infrared image of the Einstein ring. (JWST/MAST; Spaceguy44/Reddit)
In the last photo, the data was captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) camera, downloaded from a MAST file. portal
The image uses three different filters. Red is the F1000W filter, which captures wavelengths of light at 10 µm. Green is the F770W filter for 7.7 micron wavelengths. Blue is the F560W filter that captures 5.6 micron wavelengths.
Images were aligned and painted with Spaceguy44 astra and post-processed in GIMP.