Extremely rare 'Einstein ring' discovered around galaxy close to Earth

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

A powerful space telescope has spotted an extremely rare "Einstein ring" of light around a nearby galaxy. The "beautiful" glimmering ring was discovered by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope and is formed by light from a faraway galaxy hitting a galaxy close to Earth, a "mere" 500 million light years away from our Milky Way galaxy.

The light comes from a galaxy 4.42 billion light years away and has been distorted by gravity so that it can be seen from Earth surrounding the nearby galaxy, called NGC 6505.

The distant galaxy has never been seen before and has not yet been named. Einstein rings are ring-shaped images produced by a distant galaxy or star when light is bent around a massive object in space, known as gravitational lensing.

This phenomenon was predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago. Einstein rings are powerful tools for astronomers because they often reveal objects that would otherwise not have been found. “This is a beautiful, extraordinary, thrilling and lucky find in our first data,” said Prof Stephen Serjeant, an astronomer at the Open University. “An Einstein ring as perfect as this is extremely rare.