What is an Einstein Ring and how was it recently discovered?

An Einstein Ring is a rare gravitational lensing phenomenon where light from a distant galaxy is bent by the gravitational field of a closer galaxy, creating a ring-like appearance. The nearest known Einstein Ring was recently discovered when Thomas Collett's team studied NGC 6505, a galaxy located 600 million light years from Earth that was first documented in 1884. This galaxy was found to be bending light from a second galaxy approximately 6 billion light years away. Though Einstein predicted such galactic lenses in 1936, believing they would be too difficult to observe, modern technology from the European Space Agency's Euclid telescope has now made their detection possible.