James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Gravitationally lensed quasar - like jewels on a ring

Diamonds of the season ?? These glittering “gems,” or glowing orange dots, are actually four images of the same thing — an extremely bright galactic core known as a quasar. The quasar appears like an arc with four bright spots because of an intriguing effect called gravitational lensing. The gravity of a massive foreground object, in this case a galaxy, is so powerful that it has warped time and space around it. Light followed that bend and took various paths, magnifying and creating multiple copies of the quasar behind the galaxy. Gravitational lensing is a great way for scientists to study very distant objects that might be too faint or far. Combining this natural “magnifying glass” with Webb’s mid-infrared capabilities, scientists can learn more about the quasar's central black hole. Webb's observations will also probe the nature of dark matter, an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass. Read more: esawebb.org/images/potm2406a/ Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg Image description: A small image of a galaxy appears as a dim blue ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright orange spots, right next to each other. These are copies of a single quasar in the galaxy. A fourth copy can be seen towards the bottom of the ring. In the center of the ring, there is a foreground elliptical galaxy with such powerful gravity that it is magnifying the other galaxy and its quasar. It appears as a small blue dot. The background of this image is black and empty. Image & Description by NASA