Astronomers Dissect a Supermassive Black Hole

Matt_dk sends along a piece from the European Southern Observatory, which reports on observations of the so-called "Einstein Cross," a fortuitous conjunction of a nearby galaxy and a distant black hole. A team of researchers from Europe and the US combined the effects of macrolensing (from the intervening galaxy) and microlensing (from stars in that galaxy), captured by an earth-bound telescope. "Combining a double natural 'magnifying glass' with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinized the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away. They were able to study the disc with a level of detail a thousand times better than that of the best telescopes in the world, providing the first observational confirmation of the prevalent theoretical models of such discs."

lucky event

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote FTA:

"The use of the macro- and microlensing, coupled with the giant eye of the VLT, enabled astronomers to probe regions on scales as small as a millionth of an arcsecond. This corresponds to the size of a one euro coin seen at a distance of five million kilometres, i.e., about 13 times the distance to the Moon!"

A truly fortuitous occurence. How long before our technology can catch up to that level?

On the otherside of the visible universe

[critical_point]

It has not been that long since people first discovered such quasars, and at that time they seemed destined to remain a mega-distant mystery. In the mean time astronomers have accumulated a large body of results on gravitational lensing, which itself is a prediction of Einstein's not-too-old general theory of relativity. Now this technique has been used to form a galatic-cluster-scale configuration that acts as a telescope which can bring us images of this extreme level of detail from across the visible universe. We live in a very exciting period for the science of astronomy.

I want Einstein's cross on a silver chain

[xant]

... seriously. This would be such a great accessory for the scientifically-minded. It's a nice, distinctive-looking piece of science [eso.org]. Wear it as an atheist as a statement about religion; wear it next to your christian cross as a non-atheist as a statement about rational spirituality. Whatever - I just think someone could make a nice piece of thoughtful jewelery out of this.