Near-Perfect Einstein Ring Discovered

Fraser Cain writes "Universe Today is reporting on the discovery of a nearly perfect Einstein Ring; a gravitational lens of a nearby galaxy working as a natural telescope to focus the light from a more distant galaxy. Gravitational lenses have been seen many times before, but never so complete, with a close lensing galaxy and a distant magnified galaxy."

Einstein's genius

[fallendove]

With all the miraculous things he did for the world in the realm of science, one wonders what we'd have if he'd devoted his mind to politics, or computers.

Re:Hmmm.....

[WindBourne]

I was thinking about those the other day. Personally, I have not understood why GWB's henchman are cutting these little ones. I was thinking that they, like hubble, can be replaced by superior sats. In fact, if we finally get the nuclear power going for remote sats, that we can have something past the voyagers in under a decade and with better instruments.
But then I think about how little the voy. program costs us ( less than a couple million / year total ). Considering that our current deficit is out of sight, I seriously doubt that it will launch the replacements for voys as they cost 1 BILLION each back in the 70s. If we used ion engines, laser transmission, nuke engines, etc., these baby are going to cost 5 billion for a single launch. Not going to happen anytime soon. So best to keep the voys going until they are gone.

As to the hubble, well, there is an new appointee coming who does understand the science.

Visible?

[Hatta]

FTFA:

According to the paper, the ring inscribes a "C-shaped" circle of 270 degrees in near-complete circumference with an apparent radius of slightly more than 1 3/4 arc seconds - roughly the size of a star's "virtual" image seen at high power through a small amateur telescope.

So would this thing be visible with a small amateur telescope, or is it too dim? Does it even emit in the visible spectrum?

New Hubble vs. fixing the old one

[ACNSlave]

Oddly enough, this has been part of the discussion on Hubble for quite some time. Apparently there are upgrades to a number of the modules for Hubble that could just as easily be incorporated into a new telescope for a fraction of the cost of another "rescue" mission. Of course that does not solve the issue of needing to maintain the new telescope...

Bruce

http://bruceneufeld.com/ [bruceneufeld.com]

Would this work two ways?

[baadger]

Would this ring, or others like it, work in two directions? i.e. diverging electromagnetic radiation sourcing from here across the space we see 'through' the lens?

Just curious.

Re:Einstein's genius

[Planesdragon]

With all the miraculous things he did for the world in the realm of science, one wonders what we'd have if he'd devoted his mind to politics, or computers.

Politics: Not that much. At best, we'd have no nuclear bombs and another dead jew in Germany. (Or, at most, we might have entered WWII earlier, but with no A-bomb we'd still be fighting it...)

Computers: Diddly. Einstein's genius was seeing the correlation between things, not the minutae of math. He would have sucked at the personnal computer.

Re:Hmmm.....

[Anonymous Coward]

In writing this article I learned that Remi Cabanac - the discovering astronomer - has request HST time to better resolve the Einstein Ring and gain invaluable spectroscopic info. I asked him why he needed such a small scope when he had the 8m VLT available. Apparently the VLT is not fit with adapative optics which means sky conditions (limited to about .5 arcsec resolution 1/3rd the size of the ring) prevents getting a good look at it.

Let's hope we get n image from the HST before it turns into a non-functional memorial in space!