A small image of a galaxy that has been distorted into a faint ring by gravitational lensing. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the borrowed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. At the center of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a tiny blue dot. The background is black and empty. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg
This new Image of the Month, taken by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, shows the gravitational lensing of the quasar RX J1131-1231, located about six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater.
It is considered one of the best lensing quasars yet discovered, because the foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc, creating four images of the object.
Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars, acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. All matter in the universe distorts the space around it, with larger masses producing a stronger effect.
Around very massive objects, such as galaxies, light that passes nearby follows this warped space, appearing to bend from its original path by a clearly visible amount. One effect of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, allowing astronomers to study objects that would otherwise be too faint or too distant.
Measuring the X-ray emission from quasars can provide an indication of how fast the central black hole is spinning, giving researchers important clues about how black holes grow over time.
For example, if a black hole grew primarily through collisions and mergers between galaxies, it should accumulate material in a stable disk, and the constant supply of new material from the disk should result in a rapidly spinning black hole. On the other hand, if the black hole grew through many small accretion episodes, it would accumulate material from random directions.
Observations have shown that the black hole in this particular quasar is spinning at more than half the speed of light. This suggests that this black hole grew through mergers and not by pulling matter in from different directions.
This image was taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) as part of an observational program to study dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the mass of the universe. Webb’s observations of quasars allow astronomers to probe the nature of dark matter on smaller scales than ever before.
Provided by the European Space Agency
Quote: Webb admires the bejeweled ring of the lensed quasar RX J1131-1231 (2024, July 5) Retrieved July 5, 2024, from https://phys.org/news/2024-07-webb-bejeweled-lensed-quasar-rx.html
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