The European Space Agency (ESA) said Monday that its Euclid space telescope has detected a rare bright halo of light around a nearby galaxy.

Known as an Einstein ring, the halo was captured in photos encircling a galaxy nearly 590 million light-years away, which is considered close by cosmic standards. A single light-year is measured at 5.8 trillion miles.

While astronomers have known about the galaxy where the phenomenon was captured for over a century, they were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, 

Euclid blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 1, 2023, to begin a six-year mission to explore the dark universe.

GIANT STELLAR NURSERY REVEALED IN NEW IMAGES FROM ESA'S SPACE TELESCOPE

But before the space telescope could begin its survey of the universe, scientists had to ensure everything onboard was working properly. During the early phase of testing, which took place in September 2023, Euclid sent images back to Earth.

The ESA said the images were deliberately out of focus, but in one of the images, Euclid Archive Scientist Bruno Altieri saw what he believed was a very special phenomenon and decided to look at it a bit closer.

"I look at the data from Euclid as it comes in," Bruno said in a press release from the ESA. "Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring. For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing."

For most of the population out there, an Einstein Ring is an "extremely rare phenomenon," the ESA said.

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When a distant galaxy is observed through a telescope, the light from that galaxy may encounter another galaxy on its way to the telescope. When that happens, the foreground galaxy acts like a magnifying glass, and gravity causes the traveling light rays to bend. When light rays bend, scientists call that gravitational lensing, according to the ESA.

When the background galaxy, lensing galaxy and telescope are in perfect alignment, the image appears as a ring, also known as an Einstein Ring.

The galaxy, called NGC 6506, is about 590 million light-years away, and this is the first time the ring of light around its center has ever been detected.

"All strong lenses are special, because they're so rare, and they're incredibly useful scientifically," Conor O’Riordan of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said. "This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful."

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Einstein rings are based on physicist Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which predicts that light will bend around objects in space, so they focus the light like giant lenses, ESA said. The phenomenon allows scientists to sometimes see the light from distant galaxies that would otherwise be hidden.

"I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884," Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid project scientist, said. "The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities."

Over the course of the mission, scientists expect Euclid will reveal more about the role of gravity in the Universe, as well as the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Euclid will map over a third of the sky and observe billions of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away, ESA said. In doing so, scientists expect Euclid to find around 100,000 more strong lenses, though finding one so cosmically close to home and so spectacular, ESA added, "is astonishing."

"Euclid is going to revolutionize the field, with all this data we've never had before," O’Riordan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Elon Musk’s sense of humor is out of this world. 

Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts confused it with an asteroid earlier this month. 

A day after the astronomers with the Minor Planet Center registered 2018 CN41, it was deleted on Jan. 3 when they revealed that it was in fact Musk’s roadster. 

The center said on its website that 2018 CN41’s registry was deleted after "it was pointed out the orbit matches an artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster. The designation2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted."

 DEBRIS FROM SPACEX STARSHIP STREAKS THROUGH THE SKY

SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX's huge Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. 

The roadster was expected to go into elliptical orbit around the sun, going a little beyond Mars and back toward Earth, but it apparently exceeded the orbit of Mars and kept going to the asteroid belt, according to Musk at the time. 

When the roadster was mistaken for an asteroid earlier this month, it was less than 150,000 miles from Earth, which is closer than the moon’s orbit, according to Astronomy Magazine, meaning that astronomers would want to monitor how close it gets to Earth. 

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Center for Astrophysics (CfA) astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Astronomy magazine that the mistake shows the issues with untracked objects. 

"Worst case, you spend a billion launching a space probe to study an asteroid and only realize it’s not an asteroid when you get there," he said.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to SpaceX for comment. 

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured photos of one of the earliest supernovas ever seen, with features appearing like grains and knots found in a cut of wood.

"Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star apart as it went," NASA said on its website. "When the shockwave reached the star’s surface, it punched through, generating a brief, intense pulse of X-rays and ultraviolet light that traveled outward into the surrounding space."

Now, nearly 350 years later, scientists are getting a view of the aftermath as the pulse of light reaches interstellar material and causes it to glow.

The infrared glow created was captured by JWST, revealing details that look like knots and whorls found in wood grain.

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"Even as a star dies, its light endures—echoing across the cosmos. It’s been an extraordinary three years since we launched NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Every image, every discovery, shows a portrait not only of the majesty of the universe but the power of the NASA team and the promise of international partnerships. This groundbreaking mission, NASA’s largest international space science collaboration, is a true testament to NASA’s ingenuity, teamwork, and pursuit of excellence," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. "What a privilege it has been to oversee this monumental effort, shaped by the tireless dedication of thousands of scientists and engineers around the globe. This latest image beautifully captures the lasting legacy of Webb—a keyhole into the past and a mission that will inspire generations to come."

While beautiful in nature, the observations also give astronomers the ability to map the 3-dimensional structure of the interstellar dust and gas for the first time.

"We were pretty shocked to see this level of detail," Jacob Jencson of Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, the principal investigator of the science program, said.

Josh Peek of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore is also a member of the team and said they see layers like those of an onion.

POWERFUL WEBB TELESCOPE SPIES SPECTACULAR STAR BIRTH CLUSTER BEYOND THE MILKY WAY

"We think every dense, dusty region that we see, and most of the ones we don’t see, look like this on the inside," he said. "We just have never been able to look inside them before."

The images produced from the JWST near-infrared camera (NIRCam) highlight a phenomenon called light echo, NASA said, which is created when a star explodes or erupts before flashing light into surrounding masses of dust and causing them to shine.

The visible light echoes are caused when the light reflects off interstellar material, where those at infrared wavelengths are caused when the dust is warmed by energetic radiation, causing it to glow.

Scientists targeted a light echo previously observed by NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, and it is one of dozens found near remains of the Cassiopeia A supernova.

MERGER OF MASSIVE BLACK HOLES FROM EARLY UNIVERSE UNCOVERED BY WEBB TELESCOPE, SCIENTISTS SAY

The Webb images show tightly packed sheets, with filaments displaying structures on what NASA called "remarkably small scales," of about 400 astronomical units, or less than one-hundredth of a light year. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, and Neptune's orbit is 60 astronomical units in diameter.

"We did not know that the interstellar medium had structures on that small of a scale, let alone that it was sheet-like," Peek said.

The discovery was compared by scientists to a medical CT scan.

"We have three slices taken at three different times, which will allow us to study the true 3D structure. It will completely change the way we study the interstellar medium," Armin Rest of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and member of the team, said.

The team's findings will be presented this week at the 245th American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.

The Webb Telescope, the successor to the Hubble and the largest telescope ever launched into space, is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency.