Space Warps Talk

TINY POSSIBLE LENS

  • falconusa1 by falconusa1

    Are these tiny events to small to measure dark matter mass?

    And should I be marking them?

    Posted

  • JasonJason by JasonJason

    Mark whatever you feel is a lens no matter how small which may translate to distance i.e. something that looks small may in fact be real large but at a great distance, so if you feel it is a lens I would say mark it.

    Posted

  • psaha by psaha scientist

    Agree, if in doubt, mark! We can that assume all good candidates will be followed up at higher resolutions, and that HST will zoom in on the most interesting systems. HST resolution is 5-10 times finer than this survey.

    Meanwhile, you can estimate the lensing mass already. For that you need to guesstimate the lens distance. The nearest known lensing galaxy (the Einstein cross) is just under 200 Megaparsecs, but a Gigaparsec would be more typical.

    Posted