This jeweled cosmic ring is the JWST picture of the month. The bright orbs are actually 4 images of the same distant quasar RX J1131-1231. A quasar is the luminous center of a galaxy. They appear 4 times in the image as 4 "jewels" (3 at the top, 1 at the bottom). Light from this quasar, 6 billion light-years away, has been gravitationally bent by a foreground galaxy (the blue dot). The blue ring (aka an Einstein Ring) is the lensed and smeared image of the quasar's host galaxy.
At the heart of the quasar lies a supermassive black hole (SMBH), which powers the luminous emissions from the quasar. The black hole is estimated to spin at half the speed of light near its event horizon.
Now let’s turn our eyes on today’s puzzle composed in 1973 by Comins Mansfield, the noted British composer of Two Move Chess problems.
P.S.
The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.
It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the minimum number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But there are no hard-and-fast rules; feel free to post comments as you please.