Elusive Double Einstein Ring Observed for the First Time

An Einstein Ring is one of those freaky relativistic predictions that can't possibly be true unless Einstein was right. Well, Einstein Rings have been observed in the past, and now, we have a double Einstein Ring. Doubly proving that Einstein was right!

Click here for a bigger picture of the amazing double Einstein ring.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string.

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The ring was found by an international team of astronomers led by Raphael Gavazzi and Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Santa Barbara. ... A paper has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

The phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs when a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light rays from a distant galaxy behind it, in much the same way as a magnifying glass would. When both galaxies are exactly lined up, the light forms a circle, called an "Einstein ring," around the foreground galaxy. If another background galaxy lies precisely on the same sightline, a second, larger ring will appear.

Because the odds of seeing such a special alignment are estimated to be 1 in 10,000, Treu says that they "hit the jackpot;" the odds are less than winning two consecutive bets on a single number at Roulette.

"Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature. Dark matter is not hidden to lensing," added Leonidas Moustakas of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The elegance of this lens is trumped only by the secrets of nature that it reveals."

The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away. The inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 billion and approximately 11 billion light-years.

There is a lot more in the press release, here.