James Webb Telescope Snaps Stunning ‘Bejeweled’ Einstein Ring (image-twitter/esa)

With the help of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the scientists have successfully captured some extraordinary cosmic marvels. A cosmic phenomenon called gravitational lensing has transformed the quasar’s light into a stunning “Einstein ring”.

The telescope has captured a sparkling jeweled ring, created through gravitational lensing. This quaser is located approximately 6 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater.

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This incredible phenomenon occurs when the light from a distant object, such as a quaser, travels through space-time that has been curved by the gravity of another massive object situated between a distant object and the observer.

The curvature caused the light to bend around the intervening object, creating a ring-like appearance, the Live Science report said.

In the breathtaking image, one could also notice a massive elliptical galaxy lying in the foreground. These quasars are fueled by immense amounts of gas and dust swirling into a galaxy’s supermassive black hole.

“If the black hole grew through many small accretion episodes, it would accumulate material from random directions. Observations have indicated that the black hole in this particular quasar is spinning at over half the speed of light, which suggests that this black hole has grown via mergers, rather than pulling material in from different directions,” ESA officials said in the statement.

In the James Webb Space Telescope, the elliptical image serves as a gravitational lens that appears as a small blue dot at the center of the ring. By acting as a natural telescope, the distant quasar amplifies the light which helps in proper study.

The recent image was captured using JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) as part of a comprehensive study on dark matter and its distribution across the universe.

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The concept of gravitational lensing was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity in 1915. The Einstein rings and other gravitationally lensed objects provide hidden information about distant celestial bodies.

With the recent observations and previous images from other telescopes, RXJ11311231 is considered one of the best-lensed quasars discovered to date.