A beautiful, bejeweled halo of warped light generated by a monstrous black hole takes center stage in one of the latest James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images. The luminous loop, which looks strikingly like a “Einstein ring“, is decorated with four points of light, but not all of them are real.
The star-studded halo in the new image consists of light from a quasar, a supermassive object black hole at the heart of a young galaxy that is shooting out powerful jets of energy as it swallows up huge amounts of matter. The 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 round shape of the quasar is the result of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensingwhere light from a distant object – such as a galaxy, quasar or supernova – travels through space-time bent by the gravity another massive object that lies between the distant object and the observer. As a result, the light appears to bend around the central object, even though it is moving in a straight line. In this case, the quasar is being lensed by a closer unnamed galaxy, which is visible as a blue dot in the center of the luminous ring.
Gravitational lensing also extends our view of extremely distant objects such as RX J1131-1231, which otherwise almost invisible to usThis magnifying effect can create bright spots in objects with lenses, which shine like brilliant gemstones in a piece of jewelryespecially when the distant object is not perfectly aligned with the observer.
This image shows four bright spots, suggesting that four different objects are being lensed. However, the orientation and appearance of these jewels around the ring tell us that they are mirror images of a single bright spot, which has been duplicated by the lensing effect, ESA said.
Duplication of bright spots is especially common in warped quasars because these objects are among the brightest objects in the universe.
Related: Researchers solve mystery of unexplained dense galaxy at heart of perfect ‘Einstein ring’ captured by James Webb telescope
When the light from a distant object lensed by gravity forms a perfect circle, it is known as an Einstein ring, so named because Albert Einstein first predicted the lens effect with his theory of general relativity from 1915.
In this case, however, the light is not perfectly lensed, 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 form a perfect circle.
Einstein rings and other gravitationally articulated objects can help reveal hidden information about distant objects. In 2014, for example, researchers used light from RX J1131-1231 to determine how fast the supermassive black hole was spinning, Live Science’s sister site Space.com previously reported.
The size and shape of gravitationally aligned objects also allow scientists to calculate the mass of their lensing galaxies, such as the blue dot in this image. By comparing this value to the galaxy’s emitted light, 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. As a result, these distorted light shows can distort our best tool to reveal the secret identity of dark matter.