A gallery of Einstein rings
The thin blue bull's-eye patterns in these eight Hubble Space Telescope images appear like neon signs floating over reddish-white blobs. The blobs are giant elliptical galaxies roughly 2 to 4 billion light-years away. The bull's-eye patterns are created as the light from galaxies twice as far away is distorted into circular shapes by the gravity of the giant elliptical galaxies. This phenomenon is called Gravitational Lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein almost a century ago. Gravitational Lensing occurs when the gravitational field from a massive object warps space and deflects light from a distant object behind it.
Credit:About the Image
About the Object
Name: | SDSS J073728.44+3216, SDSS J095629.78+5100, SDSS J120540.44+4910, SDSS J125028.26+5234, SDSS J140228.22+6321, SDSS J162746.45-5357, SDSS J163028.16+4520, SDSS J232120.93-9391 |
Type: | Early Universe : Galaxy : Type : Gravitationally Lensed |
Category: | Cosmology Galaxies |
Colours & filters
Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
---|---|---|
Optical B | 435 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
ACS |
Infrared I | 814 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
ACS |