New method could reveal hidden supermassive black hole binaries: Bright flashes of lensed starlight guide the way

➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1407139/new-method-could-reveal-hidden-supermassive-black-hole-binaries

📄 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/1sfl-87t4 (Open Access)

Researchers at Oxford University and the @mpi_grav in the Potsdam Science Park propose a new way to detect supermassive black hole binaries using gravitational lensing.

Black holes act as natural telescopes, bending light with their gravity. This creates bright images of stars from the same galaxy that lie behind the supermassive black hole binary.

As the binary orbits, it produces repeating flashes of lensed starlight. Wide-field sky surveys may detect these bursts in the future. These bursts can provide information about the black holes’ properties and enabling entirely new studies.

#BlackHoles #astronomy #research #science #GravitationalLens #astrophysics

Bizarre Object Detected Gravitationally Makes No Sense - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi3I47j-3oo

#Astronomy #Cosmology #GravitationalLens

The #EinsteinCross #GravitationalLens
Astronomy Picture of the Day

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260104.html

#APOD

Whooooaaaa! The new #JWST image is so good! So much physics going on — physics Einstein himself thought about!

This is called an Einstein Ring. When a massive foreground galaxy (in this case, an elliptical galaxy) warps the space-time around it, light from behind it bends in our direction.

The JWST caught this fantastic example, where the background spiral galaxy is getting warped into our view. It appears as a ring, but we can see its structures like its spiral arms, gas features and star clusters.

Incredible science happening here!

📸 ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA/G. Mahler

I added the annotations in the second image.

#astronomy #astrophysics #generalrelativity #galaxies #science #gravitationallens #Astrodon

Euclid opens data treasure trove, offers glimpse of deep fields

➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1240576/euclid-opens-data-treasure-trove-offers-glimpse-of-deep-fields

“Euclid's unique observational capability could help us to better determine the expansion rate of the Universe through gravitational-wave observations,” explains Miguel Zumalacárregui, group leader in the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity department at the @mpi_grav in the Potsdam Science Park. To do this, the researchers plan to correlate events from @LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA with the Euclid galaxy catalogues. Additionally, the large number of gravitational lens systems discovered by Euclid plays an important role. “Euclid observations could also be crucial for detecting the first gravitational waves split into multiple images by gravitational lenses,” adds Zumalacárregui.

@ec_euclid

#Euclid #ESA #GravitationalLens #GravitationalWaves

JWST Finds First Ever Einstein's Zigzag: Here's Why It Matters - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T9y769WGvE

#Astronomy #Cosmology #Astrophysics #GravitationalLens #JamesWebbTelescope

One of the coolest, most trippy deep-space object is called an Einstein ring. Named for Albert Einstein, who predicted that massive objects in space could magnify or lens the light of objects far behind them, the eerily perfect circle is an illusion created by warped space-time.
Credit:JWST

https://www.tumblr.com/theofficialastronomy101/754456005558026240/one-of-the-coolest-most-trippy-deep-space-object

#astronomy
#EinsteinRing
#GravitationalLens
#SpaceTime

#followup #friday! 🤩 Delighted to see a new study on Hamilton's Object!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.11659
Our merger hypothesis based on ONE multiple-image system and a RedMapper galaxy cluster centre is confirmed! And our analysis remains valid despite updates: 🧶🧶

#cosmology #GravitationalLens #DarkMatter #science

Since there was a new debate on H0 from lensing on another social media platform, here is your daily reminder to beware of degeneracies:

Call it the mass-sheet degeneracy or the fact that lensing = light deflection of inhomogeneities on top of a cosmic background, the fact that it's ambiguous to chop an integrated signal into an H0-part and a mass-density part makes it hard for strong lensing to probe cosmology...

https://t.co/DnM7kkXyww

#GravitationalLens #gravity #Cosmology #astronomy