A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing in a faint ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming out of them, right next to each other: these are replicas of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by gravitational lensing. In the center of the ring, the lensing elliptical galaxy appears as a small blue dot. The background is black and blank. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg
This new picture of the moon from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the gravitational lensing of the quasar known as RX J1131-1231, located approximately six billion light-years from Earth in the Crater constellation.
It is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, as the foreground galaxy paints the image of the background quasar in a bright arc and creates four images of the object.
Gravitational lensing, first envisioned 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 warps the space around it, with larger masses producing a stronger effect.
Around very massive objects, such as galaxies, light passing close follows this distorted space, bending from its original path by a clearly visible amount. One of the consequences of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, letting astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or distant.
Measurements of the X-ray emission from quasars can give an indication of how fast the central black hole is spinning, and this gives researchers important clues about how black holes grow over time.
For example, if a black hole grows mainly from collisions and mergers between galaxies, it should accumulate material into a stable disk, and the steady supply of new material from the disk should lead to a rapidly rotating 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 rotating at more than half the speed of light, suggesting that the black hole grew through mergers, rather than pulling in material from different directions.
This image was captured with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) as part of an observing program to study dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up most of the mass of the universe. Webb’s observations of quasars are allowing astronomers to probe the nature of dark matter on smaller scales than ever before.
Provided by the European Space Agency
citation: Webb admires bejeweled 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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