Post #431

"It's gone ... it's done!" "Yes, Mr. Frodo - it's over now!" Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's 1955 novel "Return of the King" celebrate March 25th as Tolkien Reading Day, in honor of the day hobbits Frodo and Sam brought the One Ring to the fires of Mount Doom and defeated the Dark Lord Sauron. As it happens, @nasahubble spotted a "ring" of its own in 2020. The "Molten Ring Galaxy" isn't really ring-shaped, but it looks that way because of gravitational lensing, which causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer. In this case, the light from the background galaxy has been distorted into the curve we see by the gravity of the galaxy cluster sitting in front of it.