June 10, 2015

Pictures of the galaxy SDP.81. On the left a picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the middle, the galaxy as an Einsetin ring and on the left as it's seen after being processed to eliminate the gravitational lensing distorsion (Image ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ)/Y. Tamura (The University of Tokyo)/Mark Swinbank (Durham University))

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ESO’s telescope ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array) in Chile allowed to take the most detailed images ever obtained of a galaxy called HATLAS J090311.6+003906 or SDP.81. It’s about 11.4 billion light years from Earth and its light is distorted by the phenomenon called gravitational lensing. A galaxy between it and the Earth distorts its light with its huge gravity and the result is that we see an almost perfect ring, called an Einstein ring.