In space they found a perfect Einstein ring.
Astrophysics from the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands have discovered a rare cosmic phenomenon — an Einstein ring, emerging in the result of the fact that the gravity of a massive body bends the electromagnetic radiation coming towards the Earth from the more distant object. The article was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The General theory of relativity asserts that gravity such large space objects, like galaxies, warps space around it and deflects the rays of light. When this occurs, a distorted image of another galaxy — light source. The galaxy that bends space, called a gravitational lens.
The accidental discovery was made using the devices of the Dark Energy Camera, built-in four-meter Blanco telescope in the Chilean Observatory. Ring spotted near one of the dwarf galaxies in the constellation Sculptor. It forms almost a perfect circle, what happens in that case, if one object is exactly on the same line as the others. Astrophysicists have studied it using the OSIRIS spectrograph on a Large Telescope Canary.
Galaxy-source removed 10 billion light years from Earth. However, due to the Universe expansion, this distance was smaller when the light from it began its journey to us. The time it took the photons to go from the source to the Earth, is 8.5 billion years. The distance to a gravitational lens is less than six billion light years. The first galaxy young and filled with blue stars, while the second has virtually stopped the process of star formation.
