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New science from a stunning Hubble 2020 image lights up history behind a brilliant loop of light.
The circle, also called Einstein ring after the famous physicist who predicted its existence, is due to an illusion on a galactic scale. The galaxy around which this so-called “molten ring” winds is called GAL-CLUS-022058s and it is located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax, the Furnace.
As scientists affiliated with The Hubble Space Telescope wrote in a declaration, the large ring is actually a light smear created by a lens effect that occurs when a foreground object with strong gravity amplifies light from a more distant galaxy behind it. New research suggests we see the galaxy in the ring as it was around 9 billion years ago, when the universe was only about a third of its current age of 13.8 billion years ago. ‘years.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images ever!
“The detection of the molecular gas, from which new stars have been born, allowed us to calculate the precise redshift and thus gives us the assurance that we are really looking at a galaxy very far away,” said Nikolaus Sulzenauer, doctoral student. a student at the Max Plank Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and a member of the investigation team, said in a statement released by the European Space Agency, which is partnering with NASA on the Hubble project.
“It was a time when the universe was going through a ‘baby boom’, forming thousands of stars at a prolific rate. The enlarged image of the galaxy gives astronomers a close-up glimpse into the distant past,” the statement said. from Hubble.
Back when the the photo was originally posted in 2020, scientists declared it to be one of the most complete Einstein rings ever listed. After the photo was released, astronomers dug up archival data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to calculate the galaxy’s distance to 9.4 billion light years. Further analysis allowed the team to examine stellar clusters of matter in the lens galaxy, providing clues to its evolution.
“The extremely high rate of star formation in the brightest, dustiest early galaxies saw stars born at a rate a thousand times faster than in our own galaxy. This could help explain the rapid accumulation of galaxies. current giant ellipticals, “Hubble officials said in the same release.
The initial Hubble observation was led by Saurabh Jha of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, while the principal investigator of the new research modeling the formation of the galaxy was Anastasio Díaz-Sánchez of the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena in Spain.
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