The Euclid Space Telescope, which the European Space Agency (ESA) launched into space on 1 July 2023 to examine the dark universe, signed a striking discovery in the depths of the cosmos. In his journey to investigate the expansion of the universe and the effects of dark energy and dark energy, Euclid managed to display a rare Einstein ring that excites the world of science.

In September 2023, Euclid sent his first images to Earth when he was still in the test phase. These images were not particularly taken to be clear, but ESA scientist Bruno Altieri noticed the clues of an extraordinary structure in fuzzy data: im I could even see it in the first observation, but we could see a perfect Einstein ring after making more observations in the Euclid region. ”

590 million light years away

This Einstein Development was discovered in a galaxy, called NGC 6505, about 590 million light years from Earth. This galaxy, which could be considered as “close” on a cosmic scale, has been known for a long time, but the light ring surrounding its surroundings had never been observed. Euclid’s high -resolution imaging capacity managed to reveal this ring.

The light that constitutes the ring comes from a background galaxy, 4.42 billion light years away. However, this galaxy has not been discovered before and has not yet been named.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity has been confirmed once again

This rare phenomenon is one of the events envisaged by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein theoretically revealed that large mass objects in space could bend the light and act like a lens and enlarge distant objects.

Researcher Conor O’Riordan of the Max Planck Astrophysics Institute said: “The Einstein ring is an example of strong gravitational lensing. All powerful lenses are special because they are very rare and scientifically useful. This is especially special, because it is very close to the Earth and its alignment makes it very good. ”

ESA EUCLID Project Scientist Valeria Pettorino emphasized that discovery proves the power of Euclid, “I find it very interesting that this ring was first discovered in 1884 and observed in a well -known galaxy. It shows that you can even find new things, or he says.

Euclid will discover how the universe has expanded and occurs throughout the cosmic history, and will reveal more about the role of gravity and dark energy and the nature of dark matter. The telescope aims to mapping billions of galaxies that go beyond 10 billion light years by scanning one -third of the sky.

Scientists expect to explore more than 100,000 strong gravitational lenses in this process. So far, less than 1000 strong lenses have been known and even less were displayed in high resolution. Euclid, who started official observations on February 14, 2024, has started to produce the largest 3D map of the universe.