The Einstein Ring is one of the most amazing Einstein rings we have ever seen. It allows us to see the happenings in a galaxy at the dawn of time.
The Molten Ring is a smear of light that has been stretched out by gravitational fields. It contains magnifications as well as duplications from a galaxy whose radiation has covered 9.4 billion light years. This magnification gives us rare insight into the stellar "baby boom" when the Universe was just beginning.
It is difficult to comprehend the early evolution of our Universe. It was created around 13.8 billion years ago. The first light appeared (we believe) approximately 1 billion years later. It is difficult to see light traveling that long, its sources are small, and dust obscures most of it.
Even the most luminescent objects can be difficult to see through the gulf between space-time and time. This explains why we have large gaps in our knowledge of how the Universe was created from primordial soup.
Sometimes, the Universe offers a helping hand. A magnification effect is caused by the gravitational curvature space-time around a larger object that sits between us, and another large object.
Illustration of gravitational lensesing. (NASA, ESA & L. Calada)
This curvature is followed by any light that travels through it. It then enters our telescopes, distorted and magnified. These are known as Einstein rings because Albert Einstein predicted the effect.
This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. It has provided us with some amazing images. However, it also gives us incredible opportunities to combine our magnification capabilities telescopes and those of the Universe to see distant objects that may otherwise be difficult to see clearly or not at all.
The Molten Ring, also known as GAL-CLUS-012058s, is just such an Einstein Ring. It's magnified by the gravitational field surrounding a large cluster of galaxies within the constellation of Fornax. This effect is so powerful that the distant galaxy appears in four distorted images and magnified by 20.
The images created by the Hubble Space telescope are sharper than observations made with a telescope that has a 48-meter aperture. Anastasio daz-Snchez, a Spanish researcher who worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, calculated that the light from the galaxy had traveled 9.4 billion years.
These are the four images of our galaxy. (Daz-Snchez et al., ApJ, 2021)
It is a product of a time when star formation happened at an incredible rate, a thousand times faster that star formation in today's Milky Way. Understanding the history of star formation can help us understand how galaxies developed today. We can't usually see into galaxies from that time, but they are very dusty.
The Hubble images allowed the researchers to model the lensing effect and rebuild the smears, duplications and galaxy of the Molten Ring.
Daz-Snchez stated that such a model can only be achieved with Hubble imaging. Hubble was particularly helpful in identifying the four duplicated images as well as the stellar clumps from the lensed galaxies.
This showed that the galaxy was on what is known as the main sequence star-forming galaxies. There is a correlation between galaxy masses and star formation rates, with new stars being formed at a rate from 70 to 170 solar mass per year. Star formation rates for the Milky Way are much lower at just a few solar mass per year.
We still have a lot to learn about the origins of the Universe. However, chance alignments like the Molten Ring help us discover their secrets.
The Astrophysical Journal published the research.
