Space telescope spots rare 'Einstein ring' of light around galaxy in our cosmic neighborhood Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday.
An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco.
Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.
Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein.
