欧洲航天局（ESA）的欧几里得任务发布了一张壮观的爱因斯坦环照片，这是一个由引力透镜效应在星系周围形成的光环。该环是由一个距离地球约5.9亿光年的星系的引力效应造成的。欧几里得任务于2023年7月发射，位于拉格朗日点2，配备1.2米直径的望远镜、相机和光谱仪，用于绘制超过20亿个星系的3D地图。其图像清晰度是目前地面望远镜的四倍。研究爱因斯坦环可以揭示宇宙的膨胀以及暗物质的本质。

🔭欧几里得任务是由欧洲航天局（ESA）执行的一项任务，旨在绘制超过20亿个星系的3D地图，以研究宇宙的膨胀和暗物质的性质。

🌌爱因斯坦环是由引力透镜效应形成的，当光线弯曲绕过太空中的物体时，会像一个巨大的透镜一样聚焦光线。质量越大的物体，引力透镜效应就越大，这意味着我们可以看到原本会被隐藏的遥远星系的光。

💡在此次观测中，星系NGC 6505的质量弯曲并放大了来自一个更遥远的星系的光，该星系距离地球约44.2亿光年，形成了一个环。

🔬欧几里得任务拍摄的图像清晰度是目前地面望远镜的四倍，这使得科学家能够以惊人的细节观察到爱因斯坦环。

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a spectacular image of an Einstein ring – a circle of light formed around a galaxy by gravitational lensing. Taken by the €1.4bn Euclid mission, the ring is a result of the gravitational effects of a galaxy located around 590 million light-years from Earth.

Euclid was launched in July 2023 and is currently located in a spot in space called Lagrange Point 2 – a gravitational balance point some 1.5 million kilometres beyond the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Euclid has a 1.2 m-diameter telescope, a camera and a spectrometer that it uses to plot a 3D map of the distribution of more than two billion galaxies. The images it takes are about four times as sharp as current ground-based telescopes.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that light will bend around objects in space, so that they focus the light like a giant lens. This gravitational lensing effect is bigger for more massive objects and means we can sometimes see the light from distant galaxies that would otherwise be hidden.

Yet if the alignment is just right, the light from the distant source galaxy bends to form a spectacular ring around the foreground object. In this case, the mass of galaxy NGC 6505 is bending and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy, which is about 4.42 billion light-years away, into a ring.

Studying such rings can shed light on the expansion of the universe as well as the nature of dark matter.

Euclid’s first science results were released in May 2024, following its first shots of the cosmos in November 2023. Hints of the ring were first spotted in September 2023 when Euclid was being testing with follow-up measurements now revealing it in exquisite detail.

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