The Webb telescope photographed a luminous object in the shape of a ring

The European Space Agency has released a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. It depicts an object resembling a precious ring in its shape and appearance.

The image was obtained using a MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) camera. This tool is designed to study dark matter, a form of matter invisible to the naked eye, which researchers believe makes up most of the mass of the universe.

As part of the project, the Webb telescope is conducting observations of quasars. One of them is captured in the photo. It is known as RX J1131-1231. The quasar is located about six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Chalice.

"It is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, as the foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc and creates four images of the object," the researchers write.

In the picture, the quasar looks like a blurred bright ring or a ring glowing in different colors. Gravitational lensing was first predicted by the famous theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. It is known that all matter in the universe bends the space around itself, and the greater the mass of the object, the stronger the effect.

"Around very massive objects such as galaxies, light follows a curved space that appears to deviate from its original path by a clearly visible amount," the astronomers explain. "One of the consequences of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, allowing you to study objects that would otherwise be too dim or distant."

Source: SCIENCE