Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
JWST captured a nearly perfect Einstein ring—an ultra-rare gravitational lens that bends starlight into a glowing cosmic circle.
This illusion occurs when a massive foreground galaxy warps space, bending light from a more distant galaxy into a ring.
It’s a real-life echo of Einstein’s 1915 theory—space isn’t just a backdrop, it warps under weight, twisting light like liquid.
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Such rings form only when Earth, the massive lensing galaxy, and the distant source galaxy line up almost exactly.
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The ring wraps around an elliptical galaxy in cluster SMACSJ0028.2-7537, located in the Hydrus constellation.
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Captured by JWST’s NIRCam, the image also combines Hubble data, revealing gas trails and star clusters inside the distorted galaxy.
The lens acts as a cosmic magnifier, allowing us to see galaxies that formed not long after the Big Bang—otherwise invisible to telescopes.
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By studying how light is bent, scientists can trace the invisible mass—dark matter—that shapes the universe’s hidden skeleton.
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Einstein rings aren’t just beautiful—they’re deep-space labs helping astronomers study black holes, dark matter, and the fabric of spacetime itself.