Mysterious Ring of Light Swallows a Galaxy

According to astronomer Conor O'Riordan from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Germany), the mysterious ring of light that seems to swallow the entire galaxy NGC 6505 is the Einstein ring.

This rare phenomenon is made even more spectacular by the fact that this Einstein ring, 590 million light years away, is perfectly round. When looking at it, Earthlings are looking into a region of space-time that is severely warped.

Image of the galaxy NGC 6505 in this ESA image, with an accompanying zoom showing a mysterious ring of light that seems to be swallowing it - Photo: ESA

According to Science Alert, Einstein rings are a special case of gravitational lensing.

Gravitational lensing is predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which involves the bending of space-time along with light passing through it, due to objects with strong gravitational forces lying between the observer and the light source.

Einstein rings appear only when the light source, gravitational lens, and observer are in a perfectly straight line.

In the case of the newly discovered Einstein Ring, the ring of light is actually an image of another galaxy, 4.42 billion light years away.

The curvature of space-time around NGC 6505 has caused the light that makes up this distant galaxy's image to be greatly distorted, duplicating it into four distinct spots. The light from these spots is also stretched, bending into a perfect ring shape.

This type of Einstein ring has only a 0.05% chance of existing, and an even lower chance of being detected.

Above all, it is not only a rare phenomenon, but also a "teleportation gate" that helps Earthlings observe an object so far away, so ancient that if viewed with only a normal telescope, it would be too small to observe.

Research on the Einstein ring around the galaxy NGC 6505 has just been published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Lesley Montoya

Update 18 February 2025