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A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. The background is black and empty.

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A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. The background is black and empty.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/746/433/068/155/395/original/33b92b09053026e2.jpg

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AkaSci 🛰️ (akasci@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 10:05:20 JST AkaSci 🛰️

This Quasar-studded Ring is the JWST picture of the month. The 4 "jewels" (3 at the top, 1 at the bottom) are images of the same quasar RX J1131-1231, 6 billion light-years away, whose light has been gravitationally bent by a foreground galaxy (the blue dot). The blue ring is the lensed and smeared image of the quasar's host galaxy.

At the heart of the quasar lies a supermassive black hole (SMBH), which powers the luminous emission from the quasar.
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2406a/
#jwst #quasar
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