April 11, 2021

The 12 Einstein crosses

An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the identification of 12 quasars whose image has been quadrupled by gravitational lenses obtaining images similar to the so-called Einstein Cross. Researchers from the Gaia Gravitational Lenses (GraL) group used data collected by ESA’s Gaia space probe and NASA’s WISE space telescope and examined them with machine learning algorithms. In this way, it was possible to recognize quasar candidates whose image was distorted by gravitational lenses leading to the identification of 12 Einstein crosses.