File:Einstein Cross (noao-q2237).tiff
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[edit]DescriptionEinstein Cross (noao-q2237).tiff |
English: This picture of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q2237+0305 and the associated lensing spiral galaxy was taken by the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope, on the night of October 4, 1999. This system is also known as Huchra's Lens, after its discoverer, and the Einstein Cross, because it is such an excellent example of the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, postulated by Einstein as soon as he realised that gravity would be able to bend light and thus could have lens-like effects. The four separate appearances of the same redshift 1.7 quasar are created by the redshift 0.04 galaxy whose nucleus is nicely bracketed by the quasar images. It might seem surprising that such a close alignment exists, with a galaxy exactly along the line of sight from Earth to a distant quasar, but one should remember that the Universe is large enough that unlikely things happen really quite often. This is an especially important example of a gravitational lens, because the close alignment of the galaxy nucleus and the quasar mean that the four images undergo color and brightness variations with a time scale of only a day or so. These changes can be modelled theoretically and easily monitored observationally. This is a two-color picture combining red and green images, using careful processing both to reveal the strongly blue nature of the quasar, as compared to the galaxy, and to show simultaneously the very bright quasar images and the very faint structure of the lensing galaxy. |
Date | 30 June 2020, 21:34:00 (upload date) |
Source | Einstein Cross |
Author | J.Rhoads, S.Malhotra, I.Dell'Antonio (NOAO)/WIYN/NOIRLab/NSF |
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[edit]This media was created by the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public NOIRLab website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, images of the week and captions; are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. | |
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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current | 19:30, 17 September 2023 | 1,024 × 680 (1.07 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://noirlab.edu/public/media/archives/images/original/noao-q2237.tif via Commons:Spacemedia |
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Image title | This picture of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q2237+0305 and the associated lensing spiral galaxy was taken by the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope, on the night of October 4, 1999. This system is also known as Huchra's Lens, after its discoverer, and the Einstein Cross, because it is such an excellent example of the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, postulated by Einstein as soon as he realised that gravity would be able to bend light and thus could have lens-like effects. The four separate appearances of the same redshift 1.7 quasar are created by the redshift 0.04 galaxy whose nucleus is nicely bracketed by the quasar images. It might seem surprising that such a close alignment exists, with a galaxy exactly along the line of sight from Earth to a distant quasar, but one should remember that the Universe is large enough that unlikely things happen really quite often. This is an especially important example of a gravitational lens, because the close alignment of the galaxy nucleus and the quasar mean that the four images undergo color and brightness variations with a time scale of only a day or so. These changes can be modelled theoretically and easily monitored observationally. This is a two-color picture combining red and green images, using careful processing both to reveal the strongly blue nature of the quasar, as compared to the galaxy, and to show simultaneously the very bright quasar images and the very faint structure of the lensing galaxy. |
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Width | 1,024 px |
Height | 680 px |
Bits per component |
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Compression scheme | LZW |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Orientation | Normal |
Number of components | 3 |
Number of rows per strip | 128 |
Horizontal resolution | 72 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 72 dpi |
Data arrangement | chunky format |
Software used | GIMP 2.10.20 |
File change date and time | 16:34, 15 July 2021 |
Color space | sRGB |