A beautiful halo of warped light generated by a monstrous black hole takes center stage in one of the latest images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The bright loop, which bears a striking resemblance to an “Einstein ring”, is adorned by four points of light – but not all of them are real.
The star-filled halo in the new image is made up of light from a quasar – a supermassive black hole at the heart of a young galaxy, emitting powerful jets of energy as it swallows enormous amounts of matter. This quasar, previously known to scientists, is called RX J1131-1231 and is located about 6 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
The circular shape of the quasar is the result of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, where light from a distant object – such as a galaxy, quasar or supernova – travels through space-time that has been bent by the gravity of another object massive located between the distant object and the observer.
As a result, the light appears to bend around the object in the middle, even though it is traveling in a straight line. In this case, the quasar is lensed by a nearby, unnamed galaxy, which is visible as a blue dot in the center of the bright ring, writes LiveScience.
Gravitational lensing also magnifies our view of extremely distant objects, such as RX J1131-1231, that would otherwise be nearly invisible to us.
The star-filled halo in the new image, made up of light from a quasar
This magnification effect can create bright spots in lensed objects that sparkle like sparkling gems in a jewel, especially when the distant object is not perfectly aligned with the observer.
This photo has four bright spots, suggesting that four different objects are captured by the lenses. However, the orientation and appearance of these jewels around the ring tell us that they are mirror images of a single point of light, which has been duplicated by the lensing effect, according to the ESA.
Duplication of bright spots is particularly common in warped quasars, as these objects are some of the most luminous entities in the Universe.
When light from a distant, gravitationally lensed object forms a perfect circle, it is known as an Einstein ring, so named because Albert Einstein first predicted the lensing effect with his theory of general relativity in 1915.
Four bright spots
However, in this case, the light was not perfectly slowed down, and the ring shape is mainly due to the duplication of the quasar’s bright spot. Previous images of the warped quasar also show that the light does not create a perfect circle.
Einstein’s rings and other gravitationally lensed objects may help reveal hidden information about distant objects. For example, in 2014, researchers used light from RX J1131-1231 to determine how fast its supermassive black hole was spinning, Space.com previously reported.
The size and shape of gravitationally lensed objects also allow scientists to calculate the mass of the galaxies that lens them.
By comparing this value to the light emitted by the galaxy, researchers can calculate how much dark matter – a mysterious type of matter that does not react with light but interacts gravitationally with normal matter – is in these galaxies.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
