Space Warps Talk

Lens or Spiral?

  • zoombob by zoombob

    This looks like a strong contender for a #lens (not quite circular but mirror imaged).
    Any comments?

    Posted

  • drphilmarshall by drphilmarshall scientist, admin

    I see your point! The high symmetry and almost complete ring do support the lens hypothesis. BUT: I'm not sure the arcs are circular enough - the symmetry still looks more spiral than lens-like to me. Also, the fluffiness of the rest of the yellow-white light suggests the "lens" really is a bulge-dominated spiral, which means the galaxy is less massive than it looks - and this means that any arcs that form should have quite a small image separation: more like 1-2 arcsec than the 10 or so that we see here. Big bright galaxies that are big and bright because they are nearby don't make very effective lenses (they're too close to our faces!). So, I'd say: not a lens, but nevertheless a great systen to test a lens-finding robot on. They'll find this one very hard to cope with, mwah hah ha ha ha 😃

    Posted

  • AlexandredOr by AlexandredOr

    I may mistake but I think that spirals are not massive enough to be lenses and create arcs. The galaxy we are talking about is clearly a spiral. So I'd rather think it's not a lens.. Could be an inner ring...

    Posted