A near-perfect ‘Einstein ring’ in space. Courtesy: James Webb Telescope
The James Webb Space telescope captured an image of an almost perfect "Einstein ring" which is a ring of light created when light from a galaxy, star or other cosmic objects passes near a massive object before reaching Earth. This image reached the James Webb Telescope, deployed in space by American space agency NASA which snapped a photo of this special case of gravitational lensing.
The colourised picture was recently shared by a Reddit user.
Space.com said that this image was posted by Reddit user Spaceguy44 on the r/Astronomy subreddit on the platform. Spaceguy44's Reddit bio notes that the user is an astronomy graduate student.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Einstein Ring was first discovered in 1988 as the phenomenon of bending of the light was predicted by Alert Einstein. The James Webb telescope captured the image from a distant galaxy - SPT-S J041839-4751.8 - which lies around 12 billion light-years from Earth.
Earlier, NASA's Hubble Space telescope had captured images of several "Einstein Rings" but the one shared by James Webb is crucial as the telescope has offered the most detailed image owing to its high-powered lenses.
