'Molten ring': NASA captures the largest Einstein rings of the universe

Washington, United States

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever discovered in our universe.

Named GAL-CLUS-022058s, the Einstein ring is located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax (the Furnace) and was captured by Hubble Space Telescope.

The object has been nicknamed by astronomers studying this Einstein ring as the "Molten Ring," which alludes to its appearance and host constellation.

Also see: Top 10 mind-bending space discoveries and observations from 2020

First theorised to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, 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.

One of the advantages of this lensing effect is that it actually allows scientists to better study the farther away galaxy, which might have been completely invisible otherwise.

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.

While this is not the only known example of the phenomenon happening, it is one of the most striking.

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 into an almost perfect ring. The gravity from other galaxies in the cluster causes additional distortions.