Black Hole This image of a rare phenomenon—an Einstein ring—was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. What appears at first glance to be a single, odd-looking galaxy is actually two galaxies separated by a vast distance. The nearer galaxy in the foreground sits at the center of the image, while the more distant background galaxy appears to wrap around it, forming a ring. Einstein rings occur when light from a very distant object is bent (or lensed) by a massive intervening object—a gravitational lens. This happens because spacetime itself is warped by mass, thereby bending the light passing through it. While this effect is too weak to be noticed on local scales, it becomes clearly observable over vast astronomical distances. When the lensed object and the lensing object align almost perfectly, the characteristic Einstein ring shape emerges—appearing as a full circle (as seen here) or a partial ring of light around the lensing object, depending on the precision of the alignment. Such systems serve as an ideal laboratory for studying galaxies that would otherwise be too faint and distant to observe.
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