Emily Chan
The idea of gravitational lensing originated from Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which was published in 1915.
Three years before its publication, Einstein wrote down his thoughts on the behavior of light as it moved through a strong gravitational field. He surmised that gravity acted as a sort of lens that deflected light from faraway objects.
According to NASA officials, ring-shaped images, also known as Einstein rings, only develop when the lensing and imaged galaxies are aligned perfectly.
Per a 2021 study from the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, about one-fifth of spiral galaxies in the local universe include a ring-shaped pattern in their light distributions. An additional third appear to have partial rings.
The new image from the Hubble telescope was shared on August 16. It also captured several stars with notable diffraction spikes.
They look bigger than the galaxy because they lie in the foreground and are situated much closer to Earth.
