The strange image of a distant galaxy revealed what could be a huge mass of dark matter hidden in an obvious field of vision.
When Astronomers first saw a new image of the Galaxy HERS-3, taken by a northern extension millimeter array radiotelescope in France, they thought the data was incorrect.
You might like it
The image showed what looked like an “Einstein Cross.” This rare phenomenon occurs when light from a distant galaxy or quasar (a bright galaxy with an actively feeding black hole in its center) bends the centroid of gravity of the massive object before it, appearing to be divided into four points from the observer’s point of view. But what made this composition so unusual was the fifth point of light at its center. At first, “I thought that was a problem with the instrument,” Cox said.
Photons in the Einstein cross curve around the central mass are usually not expected to see the fifth point in the center.
“We cannot get a fifth image in the center unless something unusual happens with the mass bent light,” said Charles Keaton, an astronomer at Rutgers University and a co-author of a new study explaining the findings.
In the study, published September 16th in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers tried to use computer modeling to grasp exactly what’s going on with the strange cross. Their analysis revealed that all of the points of light originated from HERS-3. This eliminated the possibility that tighter and brighter objects could be in the way. They also ruled out simple equipment malfunctions by checking images against data collected by the large millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA) in Chile.
Finally, they ran a computer simulation where her chunks sat in front of her three. This time, the results matched the observations.
It is notoriously difficult to image dark matter. It does not absorb, reflect or emit light, so it is not functionally visible. However, there is gravity. The large halo of dark matter makes the galaxy itself visible (and thus can be contorted to Einstein’s cross), while pulling it with enough gravity to bending the light in the galaxy just behind it.
This discovery offers an exciting opportunity for scientists to learn more about how dark matter interacts with other universe objects. “We can study both distant galaxies and the invisible problems bent their light,” Cox said.
The team hopes to use these future observations to further test and refine the computational model.
Source link
