Most distant lens known

• by KWillett

  A paper published on Sep 12, 2013 announced the discovery of the most distant gravitational lens ever discovered. It's in data from the CANDELS survey (which our sister project Galaxy Zoo classifies), and it's a gorgeous quadruple lens that makes almost a perfect Einstein ring. If anyone is interested in reading the paper (which is only 4 pages), it's freely available here.

  Posted September 12, 2013 2:18 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Thanks for the link, Kyle ! 😄

  Posted September 12, 2013 2:56 PM

• by psaha scientist

  Anyone feel like modelling the lens? The paper does have a model, but it would be interesting to see if other models agree, and @rafael_kueng has now linked the image from the paper to SpaghettiLens.

  Posted September 12, 2013 6:02 PM

• by Capella05 moderator

  I will give it a bash - no guarantees it will be accurate though!

  Edit:

  8910 | not too sure what to make of the results.|

  8924 | reversing things around |

  Posted September 12, 2013 6:30 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Here's a first try ! Not an easy one !

  Mass distribution looks a bit weird.

  8915

  Posted September 12, 2013 6:53 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  after a bit of tweaking, mass distribution looks a bit better

  8931

  Posted September 12, 2013 7:12 PM

• by psaha scientist

  How about if you rotate the configuration so that the inner saddle point is at 5 o'clock?

  Posted September 12, 2013 8:35 PM

• by c_cld

  8968

  Posted September 12, 2013 8:38 PM

• by c_cld

  I took the option of inverting the saddle points of Els model before psaha suggestion: the outcome is a more idealized thin Einstein ring without a central blob. The quad is less obvious at pixrad12!

  Posted September 12, 2013 8:43 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Another try (with a saddlepoint at 5)

  9014

  Contour map a bit iffy. Mass distribution sort of okay.

  ---

  And with a bit of fiddling I got this.

  9027

  Contour plot and Mass distribution are absolutely crap.

  Posted September 12, 2013 11:25 PM

• by psaha scientist

  Tried revising 9014 by @ElisabethB with result 9037 which looks like a step backwards.

  Interesting though, that the mass distribution in this configurations tends to align with the observed galaxy, which suggests that 9014 and its relatives are on the right track.

  Posted September 13, 2013 2:47 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Fiddling with 9037 gives 9105.

  Looks reasonable

  Posted September 13, 2013 4:33 PM

• by Capella05 moderator

  9105 by Els looks really good.

  SpaghettiLens wasn't co-operating with me last night, kept on timing out, so I am now going to try and play around with the models.

  Posted September 13, 2013 5:03 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Just to try out every possibility ! 😄

  9165

  Here the starting saddlepoint is at 11. The synthetic image looks reasonable, but the mass distribution and the contour maps are both atrocious. I think we can safely rule out this configuration. 😄

  Posted September 13, 2013 7:48 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  I just wanted to share this one : 9188 (parent : 8931 :the four bright lensed images are very visible and they are in the right place, but that is about it. All the rest is definitely not okay.

  Posted September 13, 2013 8:23 PM

• by Budgieye moderator

  It looks very good, Elisabeth.
  

  Posted September 13, 2013 8:31 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Like I said, the synthetic image looks good, but the contour map and the mass distribution are not so good (to put it mildly ! ,-D )

  Posted September 13, 2013 8:41 PM

• by psaha scientist

  As @Capella05 said, 9105 looks the most convincing so far.

  Posted September 14, 2013 10:57 AM

• by Capella05 moderator

  Finally! I have been able to save a model (problems with my broadband).

  Not as good as Els's model, but something I can work on:
  9265

  Posted September 14, 2013 1:22 PM

• by c_cld

  another position of saddles and minima, without forgetting that input image is already a deconvoluted and reconstructed 3 IR filters images;

  have a look at HLA 814W (blue here) the main clump/blob (maximum brightness) is on the left side J100018.47+022138.74 cosmos_hst_acs-wfc_tile077 ACS/WFC F814W (hlsp) COSMOS24-04

  model 9332 pixrad 12

  

  Posted September 14, 2013 4:17 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  A bit of tweaking of 9105 gives 9238

  Improvement : the lensed image to the left is brighter

  Posted September 14, 2013 6:27 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Some tweaking of 9265 gives 9382

  I like the more elliptical form

  contour map is not great, mass distribution passes

  Posted September 14, 2013 7:41 PM

• by Capella05 moderator

  I am quite happy with this one 9271

  The lumps and bumps in the ring seem quite accurate, just need to work on the top left and bottom left corners. Mass distribution and contour maps are clean and smooth.

  Posted September 15, 2013 11:28 AM