#einstein rings

[odinsblog]

Astronomers have spotted the closest ever Einstein Ring, which Albert Einstein himself thought would be impossible to observe.

Learn more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2467413-stunning-image-shows-the-closest-ever-einstein-ring/

[zespaceblog]

Hubble rings in the New Year

While taking a picture of LEDA 803211 some 622 million light years from Earth, Hubble picked up on an Einstein ring, the galaxy which is lensed is thought to come from just 2 billion years after the Big Bang, with the foreground lensing object/s somewhere between.

The area has many more lensed objects, I look forward to a JWST view of this same object and region.

[blondebrainpowered]

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a tiny patch of sky in the constellation Hydra. The stars and galaxies depicted here span a mind-bending range of distances. Nearest to us in this image are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy, which are marked by diffraction spikes. The bright star that sits just at the edge of the prominent bluish galaxy is only 3230 light-years away, as measured by ESA's Gaia space observatory.

Behind this star is a galaxy named LEDA 803211. At 622 million light-years distant, this galaxy is close enough that its bright galactic nucleus is clearly visible, as are numerous star clusters scattered around its patchy disc. Many of the more distant galaxies in this frame appear star-like, with no discernible structure, but without the diffraction spikes of a star in our galaxy.

Of all the galaxies in this frame, one pair stands out in particular: a smooth golden galaxy encircled by a nearly complete ring in the upper-right corner of the image. This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant object is warped and magnified by the gravity of a massive foreground object, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.

The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer. A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the Universe.

[Image Description: Many mostly small, bright objects scattered over a dark background in space. In the top half on the right is an elliptical galaxy, a round light larger than the others, with a slightly warped ring of light around it. In the bottom half there is a barred spiral galaxy, big enough that we can see its bluish arms and its core in detail. Other objects include distant galaxies and nearby stars.]

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Erb

[m0stly-h4rmless]

Rings of relativity

Image, taken with Hubble Space Telescope, depicts GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax

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GAL-CLUS-022058s is the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever discovered in our Universe. The object has been nicknamed as the "Molten Ring", which alludes to its appearance and host constellation.

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Einstein rings were first theorised to exist by Einstein in 1936, in his general theory of relativity , and this object’s unusual shape can be explained by a process called gravitational lensing, which causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer. In this case, the light from the background galaxy has been distorted into the curve we see by the gravity of the galaxy cluster sitting in front of it. The near exact alignment of the background galaxy with the central elliptical galaxy of the cluster, seen in the middle of this image, has warped and magnified the image of the background galaxy around itself into an almost perfect ring. The gravity from other galaxies in the cluster is soon to cause additional distortions.

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[imjustexistingtbh]

Give us one more space fact >:)

one more space fact? i can do that B) 

einstein rings are a super cool byproduct of general relativity, and look like a galaxy stretched into a ring around a central point. this is what they look like:

this happens because of the curvature of spacetime! in the diagram below, you can see there’s three main points of interest that form a straight line - the massive object that is bending the spacetime, the distant object obscured in our line of sight, and the observer (us). 

what happens is that light travels from the distant object through the curved spacetime around the massive object, and this actually bends the light that we receive. instead of the distant object being blocked, we see it as a ring around a central point (the high mass object). 

[thegeekcloud]

Einstein Rings and why they probably should not have his name

but oh well i love him so I don't mind

Well well well

Einstein was a smart guy alright

And we have these beautiful formations in the night sky named after him:

BUT

He was not alknowing

He did not think such a thing was possible to be observed. Years had to go by until we were able to build the proper tools to get beautiful pictures such as this one. Someone else had actually suggested their existence to begin with. And Einstein had to be pushed over a lot to publish a brief note about them.

Without further delay let's get onto the story

What are Einstein Rings?

Einstein rings are another beautiful consequence of gravity's existence and its ability to bend spacetime. What Einstein stated and is here in effect is that the curvature created in spacetime because of a heavy object (and I don't mean a bag of potatoes, I mean something really heavy like a galaxy) has the ability to curve light's path which is usually straight.

Without an object large enough to bend space time in the universe, when the spacetime is considered flat, light always travels in a straight line. And that's how we perceive the location of its origin. So when the path is curved, we don't perceieve it to be and so we see the star or whayever else its origin is to be at the extension of the final straight path away from the source of gravity.

It is the same when you look at fish swiming under the surface. Difference in density of the space in which the light travels (f.e. when it goes from the air to the water and vice versa) can also change the light's path. That is called diffraction. This is something similar but smoother and bevause of gravity.

So. What we see in our pictures is actuallt the image of two objects. Two galaxies (because they are heavy enough). One red, closer to us, bending spacetime and acting as the source of gravity, and one blue, further away behind the red, acting as the source of light. The blue galaxy could had been at any angle comparee to the red and we would still had seen its image displaced, deformed and sometimes even multiplicated. BUT only when it's almost exactly behind the red galaxy do we see an Einstein ring forming because the system is symmetrical.

Now

The tea 🫖

Einstein had published the theory of general realativity. A dude named Rudi W. Mandl read it. He was an amateur scientist. At some point i think he was a dishwasher because there is a photo of him but boy did he have nerve and man was he right to have it.

He wrote to Einstein and said something in the lines of

Mandl: Hey man. You've got some fame now. A nice scientist you are. But don't you get annoyed by how many pseudoscientists there are around. Like...astrologers. what the fuck are they even doing here

Yeah. He actually mentioned all that. This colorful intro was meant to draw Einstein's attention before Mandl proposed his idea of heavy objects in the cosmos acting like lenses (and therefore creating as well Einstein rings)

Einstein was a good guy, not to displease a fan. He actually sat down and did the calculations. But, it turned out that the phrnomenon would be extremely faint and their observational machinery inadequate to detect it. Einstein wrote that

"you know what. Yeah light behaves that way but there's no way it would lead to objects acting like lenses"

Mandl did not like that. And when i say he didn't like it I mean it. He wrote back to Einstein and actually told him "bro you're wrong"

To THE Einstein

Little bertie did the calculations again, this time with more detail, but came up with almost the same result. That there is no way light can bend that much

Einstein explained that to him in his letters but Mandl wouldn't hear of it. He insisted that his theory was right. And in the end, Albert grew tired of listening to the tantrums and was like

Albert: ok. Ok buddy. No need to get upset. I'll publish it.

And publish he did...

As a note.

Soon though people were intrigued by this brand new possibility. Some claimed they had thought of it way earlier. And one day, about 40 years later, a team of scientists in California using the telescopes in Chile (yup that's how it rolls) detected the first Einstein ring.

And all because of a dishwasher who knew some science and wouldn't shut up.

More Science

[nature-godsgardenofeden]

Einstein rings, such as the one pictured here, might help astronomers understand the nature of dark matter. This luminous red galaxy’s strong gravitational field has warped light from a more distant blue galaxy into a ring shape. Scientists discovered this object, LRG 3-757, in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data from 2007. In 2011, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 took this follow-up observation. Image via ESA/ Hubble/ NASA/ APOD.

[sakuraswordly]

Source: @NasaHubble

A Hubble image of one of the largest Einstein rings ever seen prompted new research. This "ring" is created by gravitational lensing – when light from a distant galaxy is warped by the gravity of an object between the light source and the observer: https://go.nasa.gov/3u7R2EM