London: An unusual astronomical object or an Einstein ring, which is a distorted image of a very distant galaxy termed as “the source”, has been discovered by global team of astrophysicists. Doctoral student Margherita Bettinelli from the Instituto de Astr of Asica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL) along with the team discovered this rare phenomenon while analysing images of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy.
“The Canarias Einstein ring,” a phenomenon, predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, is quite rare but scientifically intriguing.
Bettinelli was examining data taken through the “Dark Energy Camera” (DECam) of the 4m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile and lurched into the discovery of rare Einstein Ring. Talking to news organisations, she said that she noticed the peculiar morphology of the Einstein ring.
The “Canarias Einstein ring” is one of the most symmetrical ones discovered until now, with the source galaxy being 10,000 million light years away from us.
“We observe it as it was then: a blue galaxy which is beginning to evolve populated by young stars which are forming at a high rate. The lens galaxy is nearer to us, 6,000 million light years away, and is more evolved. Its stars have almost stopped forming, and its population is old,” the authors noted.
“Studying these phenomena gives us especially relevant information about the composition of the source galaxy, and also about the structure of the gravitational field and of the dark matter in the lens galaxy,” explained Antonio Aparicio, one of the astrophysicists, who is leading the research.
The international journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, published the results.
The article first published on www.lafdatv.com
No comments:
Post a Comment