February 26, 2025
Your birthday marks the moment a small planet circling a modest star gained another witness to its wonders.
Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center
Birthday · February 26, 2025
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APOD published February 26, 2025. Credit: ESA, NASA, Euclid Consortium; Processing: J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured by ESA's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier this month.
Image credit: ESA, NASA, Euclid Consortium; Processing: J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li