These glittering "jewels", or glowing orange dots, are actually four images of the same object - an extremely bright galactic nucleus known as a quasar. The quasar appears like an arc in the shape of four bright dots due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

A large object in the foreground, in this case a galaxy, has such a strong gravitational field that it has bent time and space around it. Light follows various paths through this bending, creating multiple copies of the quasar behind the galaxy.

Gravitational lensing is a marvellous method that offers scientists the opportunity to study very faint or very distant objects. By combining this natural "magnifying glass" with Webb's mid-infrared capabilities, scientists can learn more about the quasar's central black hole. Webb's observations will also help investigate the nature of dark matter, which makes up a large fraction of the mass of the universe.

RX J1131-1231 is located six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation The Crater. Its interesting portrait was taken by #MIRI of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
It is one of the best lensed quasars ever discovered - it stretches the foreground galaxy image into a bright arc and forms four images of the object, giving it the appearance of a jewelled ring.
Lensing allows us to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars. Measurements of X-ray emission from quasars show how fast the central black hole is spinning and provide clues about how black holes grow.
Observations show that the black hole in this quasar is growing through mergers, rather than pulling material from many different directions.

Image description:

There is a small image of a galaxy that appears as a pale blue ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright orange dots standing side by side. These dots are copies of a single quasar in the galaxy. A fourth copy can be seen at the bottom of the ring. In the centre of the ring is an elliptical galaxy with a gravity strong enough to magnify the other galaxy and its quasar, and it appears as a small blue dot. The background of the image is black and empty.