Hubble finds double Einstein ring

ToSeek · #1 (**permalink**) 10-January-2008, 02:38 PM

Quote:

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string.

More than just a novelty, a very rare phenomenon found with the Hubble Space Telescope can offer insight into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the Universe. A double Einstein ring has been found by an international team of astronomers led by Raphael Gavazzi and Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The discovery is part of the ongoing Sloan Lens Advanced Camera for Surveys (SLACS) program. They are reporting their results at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, USA. A paper has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

Ari Jokimaki · #2 (**permalink**) 11-January-2008, 08:54 AM

Here's the preprint: The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. VI: Discovery and analysis of a double Einstein ring - Gavazzi et al.

Nadme · #3 (**permalink**) 11-January-2008, 11:59 AM

Cool!

Thanks for posting. I regularly check astronews but missed this story somehow.

Kaptain K · #4 (**permalink**) 13-January-2008, 01:52 AM

The BA also mentioned it in his blog.

Blue Fire · #5 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 03:41 AM

Yep, definitely a significant find! - Einstein's legacy is alive and well!

Fraser · #6 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 06:03 PM

I love Einstein rings. I've written several articles about them. The kind of cosmic lineup required to produce them boggles the mind.

777 geek · #7 (**permalink**) 22-January-2008, 02:42 PM

The rings make sense, but what I don't get is that other one where the projection was of four individual galaxies at the cardinals.

ngc3314 · #8 (**permalink**) 22-January-2008, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 777 geek

The rings make sense, but what I don't get is that other one where the projection was of four individual galaxies at the cardinals.

To get a nice ring you need not only a near-exact alignment, but a circularly symmetric distribution of mass in the lensing galaxy. An elliptical lens galaxy will have, at best,a lumpy ring (often with four bright, highly-magnified spots), and a disk galaxy with its multicomponent mass distribution can do likewise. With lensed quasars, the phenomenon is made more striking because their images are so small that (unless you're doing long-baseline radio interferometry) they can be magnified by 10 times in one direction and they still look the same. There are Hubble near-IR images of a couple of multiply-imaged quasars that show the highly distorted host galaxies as recognizable bits of the Einstein ring. (See the CASTLES page, for example).

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