SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · astro-ph/0606210

A New Einstein Cross: A Highly Magnified, Intrinsically Faint Lyman-Alpha Emitter at z=2.7

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new Einstein cross at redshift z_S = 2.701 based on Lyman-alpha emission in a cruciform configuration around an SDSS luminous red galaxy (z_L = 0.331). The system was targeted as a possible lens based on an anomalous emission line in the SDSS spectrum. Imaging and spectroscopy from the W. M. Keck Observatory confirm the lensing nature of this system. This is one of the widest-separation galaxy-scale lenses known, with an Einstein radius of ~1.84 arcsec. We present simple gravitational lens models for the system and compute the intrinsic properties of the lensed galaxy. The total mass of the lensing galaxy within the 8.8 +/- 0.1 kpc enclosed by the lensed images is (5.2 +/- 0.1) x 10^11 M_sun. The lensed galaxy is a low mass galaxy (0.2 L*) with a high equivalent-width Lyman-alpha line (EW_Lya_rest = 46 +/- 5 Angstroms). Follow-up studies of this lens system can probe the mass structure of the lensing galaxy, and can provide a unique view of an intrinsically faint, high-redshift, star-forming galaxy at high signal-to-noise ratio.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Adam S. Bolton, Leonidas A. Moustakas, Daniel Stern, Scott Burles, Arjun Dey, Hyron Spinrad. 2006-06-08. A New Einstein Cross: A Highly Magnified, Intrinsically Faint Lyman-Alpha Emitter at z=2.7. https://doi.org/10.1086/506446

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

A survey of debris trails from short-period comets

We observed 34 comets using the 24 micron camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Each image contains the nucleus and covers at least 10^6 km of each comet's orbit. Debris trails due to mm-sized or larger particles were found along the orbits of 27 comets; 4 comets had small-particle dust tails and a viewing geometry that made debris trails impossible to distinguish; and only 3 had no debris trail despite favorable observing conditions. There are now 30 Jupiter-family comets with known debris trails, of which 22 are reported in this paper for the first time. The detection rate is >80%, indicating that debris trails are a generic feature of short-period comets. By comparison to orbital calculations for particles of a range of sizes ejected over 2 yr prior to observation, we find that particles comprising 4 debris trails are typically mm-sized while the remainder of the debris trails require particles larger than this. The lower-limit masses of the debris trails are typically 10^11 g, and the median mass loss rate is 2 kg/s. The mass-loss rate in trail particles is comparable to that inferred from OH production rates and larger than that inferred from visible-light scattering in comae.

astro-ph

Deformation procedure for scalar fields in cosmology

This work offers an extension of the deformation procedure introduced in field theory to the case of standard cosmology in the presence of real scalar field in flat space-time. The procedure is shown to work for many models, which give rise to several different cosmic scenarios, evolving under the presence of first-order differential equations which solve the corresponding equations of motion very appropriately.

astro-ph