Serendipitous discovery of quadruply imaged quasars - two diamonds
At a Glance
Section titled âAt a Glanceâ| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2018-02-05 |
| Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Authors | J. R. Lucey, Paul L. Schechter, Russell J. Smith, T. Anguita |
| Institutions | Universidad Andrés Bello, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics |
| Citations | 22 |
Abstract
Section titled âAbstractâGravitationally lensed quasars are powerful and versatile astrophysical\ntools, but they are challengingly rare. In particular, only ~25\nwell-characterized quadruple systems are known to date. To refine the target\ncatalogue for the forthcoming Taipan Galaxy Survey, the images of a large\nnumber of sources are being visually inspected in order to identify objects\nthat are confused by a foreground star or galaxies that have a distinct\nmulti-component structure. An unexpected by-product of this work has been the\nserendipitous discovery of about a dozen galaxies that appear to be lensing\nquasars, i.e. pairs or quartets of foreground stellar objects in close\nproximity to the target source. Here we report two diamond-shaped systems.\nFollow-up spectroscopy with the IMACS instrument on the 6.5m Magellan Baade\ntelescope confirms one of these as a z = 1.975 quasar quadruply lensed by a\ndouble galaxy at z = 0.293. Photometry from publicly available survey images\nsupports the conclusion that the other system is a highly sheared\nquadruply-imaged quasar. In starting with objects thought to be galaxies, our\nlens finding technique complements the conventional approach of first\nidentifying sources with quasar-like colours and subsequently finding evidence\nof lensing.\n
Tech Support
Section titled âTech SupportâOriginal Source
Section titled âOriginal SourceâReferences
Section titled âReferencesâ- 2003 - CDS/ADC Collection of Electronic Catalogues