Can one galaxy hide behind another? Not in the case of B1938 666 [
http://www.jb.man.a…]. Here the foreground galaxy acts like a huge gravitational lens [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], pulling the light from the background object around it, keeping it visible. Here the alignment is so precise that the distant galaxy is distorted into a nearly perfect giant ring around the foreground galaxy, a formation known as an Einstein ring [
http://www.iam.ubc.…]. The bright peak at the center of the bulls-eye is the nearer galaxy. The cosmic mirage [
http://vela.astro.u…] was found initially with the MERLIN radio telescope array [
http://www.jb.man.a…]. The follow-up image shown above from the Hubble Space Telescope [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] was released [
http://www.jb.man.a…] earlier today. Although appearing extremely small at 1 arcsecond [
http://proxima.astr…] diameter, the above Einstein ring [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] is really tens of thousands of light years across.
Explanation
Can one galaxy hide behind another? Not in the case of B1938 666 [
http://www.jb.man.a…]. Here the foreground galaxy acts like a huge gravitational lens [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], pulling the light from the background object around it, keeping it visible. Here the alignment is so precise that the distant galaxy is distorted into a nearly perfect giant ring around the foreground galaxy, a formation known as an Einstein ring [
http://www.iam.ubc.…]. The bright peak at the center of the bulls-eye is the nearer galaxy. The cosmic mirage [
http://vela.astro.u…] was found initially with the MERLIN radio telescope array [
http://www.jb.man.a…]. The follow-up image shown above from the Hubble Space Telescope [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] was released [
http://www.jb.man.a…] earlier today. Although appearing extremely small at 1 arcsecond [
http://proxima.astr…] diameter, the above Einstein ring [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] is really tens of thousands of light years across.
Explanation
