Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday Galactic Blogging
Need visual proof of General Relativity? Today's your lucky day! The white smeary dot at the center of this image is a relatively normal seeming, distant, apparent elliptical. The partial ring surrounding it is another galaxy, lined up distantly behind the first, whose image has been lensed by the gravitation of the closer galaxy. Known as Einstein Rings such objects aren't necessarily galaxies. The phenomenon only occurs in instances where the two objects are nearly perfectly lined up. It's an APOD image and you know the drill.