2,518 research outputs found
MERLIN/VLA imaging of the gravitational lens system B0218+357
Gravitational lenses offer the possibility of accurately determining the
Hubble parameter (H_0) over cosmological distances, and B0218+357 is one of the
most promising systems for an application of this technique. In particular this
system has an accurately measured time delay (10.5+/-0.4 d; Biggs et al. 1999)
and preliminary mass modelling has given a value for H_0 of 69 +13/-19
km/s/Mpc. The error on this estimate is now dominated by the uncertainty in the
mass modelling. As this system contains an Einstein ring it should be possible
to constrain the model better by imaging the ring at high resolution. To
achieve this we have combined data from MERLIN and the VLA at a frequency of 5
GHz. In particular MERLIN has been used in multi-frequency mode in order to
improve substantially the aperture coverage of the combined data set. The
resulting map is the best that has been made of the ring and contains many new
and interesting features. Efforts are currently underway to exploit the new
data for lensing constraints using the LensClean algorithm (Kochanek & Narayan
1992).Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 6 pages, 4 included PostScript
figure
The Effects of Massive Substructures on Image Multiplicities in Gravitati onal Lenses
Surveys for gravitational lens systems have typically found a significantly
larger fraction of lenses with four (or more) images than are predicted by
standard ellipsoidal lens models (50% versus 25-30%). We show that including
the effects of smaller satellite galaxies, with an abundance normalized by the
observations, significantly increases the expected number of systems with more
than two images and largely explains the discrepancy. The effect is dominated
by satellites with ~20% the luminosity of the primary lens, in rough agreement
with the typical luminosities of the observed satellites. We find that the lens
systems with satellites cannot, however, be dropped from estimates of the
cosmological model based on gravitational lens statistics without significantly
biasing the results.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, more discussion of sis vs sie and inclusion of
uncorrelated contribution
Finding Gravitational Lenses With X-rays
There are , 0.1 and 0.01 gravitationally lensed X-ray sources per
square degree with soft X-ray fluxes exceeding and
respectively. These sources will be detected
serendipitously with the Chandra X-ray Observatory at a rate of 1--3 lenses per
year of high resolution imaging. The low detection rate is due to the small
area over which the HRC and ACIS cameras have the <1\farcs5 FWHM resolution
necessary to find gravitational lenses produced by galaxies. Deep images of
rich clusters at intermediate redshifts should yield one wide separation
(\Delta\theta \gtorder 5\farcs0) multiply-imaged background X-ray source for
every , 30 and 300 clusters imaged to the same flux limits.Comment: 13 pages, including 5 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter
The quiescent progenitors of four Type II-P/L supernovae
We present Large Binocular Telescope difference imaging data for the final
years of four Type II-P/L supernovae progenitors. For all four, we find no
significant evidence for stochastic or steady variability in the U, B, V, or
R-bands. Our limits constrain variability to no more than roughly 5-10% of the
expected R-band luminosities of the progenitors. These limits are comparable to
the observed variability of red supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds. Based on
these four events, the probability of a Type II-P/L progenitor having an
extended outburst after Oxygen ignition is <37% at 90% confidence. Our
observations cannot exclude short outbursts in which the progenitor returns to
within ~10% of its quiescent flux on the time scale of months with no dust
formation.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Accepted to MNRA
High resolution observations and mass modelling of the CLASS gravitational lens B1152+199
We present a series of high resolution radio and optical observations of the
CLASS gravitational lens system B1152+199 obtained with the Multi-Element
Radio-Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)
and Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Based on the milliarcsecond-scale
substructure of the lensed radio components and precise optical astrometry for
the lensing galaxy, we construct models for the system and place constraints on
the galaxy mass profile. For a single galaxy model with surface mass density
Sigma(r) propto r^-beta, we find that 0.95 < beta < 1.21 at 2-sigma confidence.
Including a second deflector to represent a possible satellite galaxy of the
primary lens leads to slightly steeper mass profiles.Comment: 7 pages, post-referee revision for MNRA
The Optical, Ultraviolet, and X-ray Structure of the Quasar HE 0435-1223
Microlensing has proven an effective probe of the structure of the innermost
regions of quasars, and an important test of accretion disk models. We present
light curves of the lensed quasar HE 0435-1223 in the R band and in the
ultraviolet, and consider them together with X-ray light curves in two energy
bands that are presented in a companion paper. Using a Bayesian Monte Carlo
method, we constrain the size of the accretion disk in the rest-frame near- and
far-UV, and constrain for the first time the size of the X-ray emission regions
in two X-ray energy bands. The R-band scale size of the accretion disk is about
10^15.23 cm (~23 r_g), slightly smaller than previous estimates, but larger
than would be predicted from the quasar flux. In the UV, the source size is
weakly constrained, with a strong prior dependence. The UV to R-band size ratio
is consistent with the thin disk model prediction, with large error bars. In
soft and hard X-rays, the source size is smaller than ~10^14.8 cm (~10 r_g) at
95% confidence. We do not find evidence of structure in the X-ray emission
region, as the most likely value for the ratio of the hard X-ray size to the
soft X-ray size is unity. Finally, we find that the most likely value for the
mean mass of stars in the lens galaxy is ~0.3 M_sun, consistent with other
studies.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. Replaced with version accepted to Ap
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