                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2022 July 5

                        A Molten Galaxy Einstein Ring
     Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Jha; Processing: Jonathan Lodge

   Explanation: It is difficult to hide a galaxy behind a cluster of
   galaxies. The closer cluster's gravity will act like a huge lens,
   pulling images of the distant galaxy around the sides and greatly
   distorting them. This is just the case observed in the featured image
   recently re-processed image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The
   cluster GAL-CLUS-022058c is composed of many galaxies and is lensing
   the image of a yellow-red background galaxy into arcs seen around the
   image center. Dubbed a molten Einstein ring for its unusual shape, four
   images of the same background galaxy have been identified. Typically, a
   foreground galaxy cluster can only create such smooth arcs if most of
   its mass is smoothly distributed -- and therefore not concentrated in
   the cluster galaxies visible. Analyzing the positions of these
   gravitational arcs gives astronomers a method to estimate the dark
   matter distribution in galaxy clusters, as well as infer when the stars
   in these early galaxies began to form.

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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

