News: The Euclid Space Telescope has discovered a new Einstein ring, named Altieri’s ring, in the nearby galaxy NGC 6505.
About Euclid Space Telescope
- The Euclid Space Telescope is a space observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on July 1, 2023, with the mission to explore the dark universe including dark matter and dark energy.
- Aim: It aims to map the large-scale structure of the universe and study how cosmic structures evolved over time.
- Mission Objectives: It involves:
- Understanding Dark Energy: Euclid will help determine how dark energy influences the expansion of the universe.
- Mapping Dark Matter: By observing gravitational lensing effects, Euclid will provide insights into the distribution of dark matter.
- Studying Galaxy Evolution: The telescope will observe billions of galaxies to understand their formation and growth over 10 billion years.
- Euclid is positioned at the Lagrange Point 2 (L2), 1.5 million km from Earth, to avoid interference from Earth’s light and atmosphere.
- Field of View: Much wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing it to scan vast areas of the sky efficiently.
- Over six years, Euclid will observe one-third of the sky and study billions of galaxies.
About Einstein Ring
- An Einstein ring is a ring-shaped pattern of light formed due to gravitational lensing.
- It occurs when light from a distant galaxy is bent by the gravitational field of a massive celestial object (such as a galaxy or cluster) in front of it.
- The light bends in such a way that it appears as a circular ring around the foreground object.
- Einstein rings are extremely rare—less than 1% of galaxies produce them. The first Einstein ring was discovered in 1987, and only a few have been found since then.
- These rings are not visible to the naked eye and require powerful space telescopes like ESA’s Euclid or NASA’s Hubble.
