TY - JOUR
T1 - Thirty-fold
T2 - Extreme Gravitational Lensing of a Quiescent Galaxy at z=1.6
AU - Ebling, Heather
AU - Stockmann, Mikkel Bo Rohde
AU - Richard, J.
AU - Zabl, J.
AU - Brammer, G.
AU - Toft, Sune
AU - Man, A.
PY - 2018/1/1
Y1 - 2018/1/1
N2 - We report the discovery of eMACSJ1341-QG-1, a quiescent galaxy at z = 1.594 located behind the massive galaxy cluster eMACSJ1341.9-2442 (z = 0.835). The system was identified as a gravitationally lensed triple image in Hubble Space Telescope images obtained as part of a snapshot survey of the most X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z > 0.5 and spectroscopically confirmed in ground-based follow-up observations with the ESO/X-Shooter spectrograph. From the constraints provided by the triple image, we derive a first, crude model of the mass distribution of the cluster lens, which predicts a gravitational amplification of a factor of ∼30 for the primary image and a factor of ∼6 for the remaining two images of the source, making eMACSJ1341-QG-1 by far the most strongly amplified quiescent galaxy discovered to date. Our discovery underlines the power of SNAPshot observations of massive, X-ray selected galaxy clusters for lensing-assisted studies of faint background populations.
AB - We report the discovery of eMACSJ1341-QG-1, a quiescent galaxy at z = 1.594 located behind the massive galaxy cluster eMACSJ1341.9-2442 (z = 0.835). The system was identified as a gravitationally lensed triple image in Hubble Space Telescope images obtained as part of a snapshot survey of the most X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z > 0.5 and spectroscopically confirmed in ground-based follow-up observations with the ESO/X-Shooter spectrograph. From the constraints provided by the triple image, we derive a first, crude model of the mass distribution of the cluster lens, which predicts a gravitational amplification of a factor of ∼30 for the primary image and a factor of ∼6 for the remaining two images of the source, making eMACSJ1341-QG-1 by far the most strongly amplified quiescent galaxy discovered to date. Our discovery underlines the power of SNAPshot observations of massive, X-ray selected galaxy clusters for lensing-assisted studies of faint background populations.
U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/aa9fee
DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/aa9fee
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2041-8205
VL - 852
SP - L7-L11
JO - The Astrophysical Journal Letters
JF - The Astrophysical Journal Letters
IS - 1
ER -