1979 Astronomers discovered two quasars that were almost the same location and not far away, called "dual quasars", which are actually different pictures of the same object. What's more interesting is that these pictures are light formations from different paths, and the time is also different, resulting in flickering pictures of quasars. The flashing time varies by 14 months.
In 2022, astronomers released a quasar research report with similar situations. After spending 14 years studying the target of how long it takes to delay the observation pictures, we found that the galaxy of galaxy cluster and dark matter did cause the quasar star light to detour: the gravity lens effect generated by light through the galaxy cluster advances in different paths, resulting in delay. The source of the delay is galaxy cluster SDSS J1004+4112. José Antonio Muñoz Lozano, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, said: "We observed four pictures, which were actually the same quasar, but when the light came to us, it was distorted by the gravity field of the galaxy cluster." The director of the Observatory of the University of Valencia also said: "Because the light path time of each picture is different, we must observe it in batches. For this study, the first observation image will have to wait 6.73 years before it will be reproduced in the fourth picture."
time delay is an important tool to help astronomers study large-mass clusters with lens effects. Galaxy clusters have amazing mass, and some contain thousands of galaxies. The gravity of galaxies combined with the dark matter mixed in it, the impact of these lenses with uneven mass distribution on starlight from distant objects is the focus of astronomers' research: how massive galaxies affect the light paths of distant quasars. Professor
Lozano said: "Measurement of time delay can help us better understand the characteristics and mass distribution of galaxies and clusters, and also provide new data for Hubble constant ." You can understand other characteristics of lens galaxy clusters, such as dark matter, galaxy stars and other objects distribution, calculating the accretion disk size of quasars, etc.
research was published in "The Astrophysical Journal".
Hubble Telescope shot galaxy cluster SDSS J1004+4112 and lens imaging quasar.
illustrates the gravity lens effect, the light path and imaging of quasar light when passing through galaxy clusters.
(First image source: NASA)
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