Galaxy NGC 6505: Einstein Ring at Center | Europe's Euclid Space Telescope

Galaxy NGC 6505: Einstein Ring at Center | Europe's Euclid Space Telescope

    

Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured by the European Space Agency's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier this month.

Image Credit & Copyright: ESA, NASA, Euclid Consortium
Processing: J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li

Cuillandre's website: https://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/~jcc/

Release Date: Feb. 26, 2025

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