The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy

Details The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy

2007-06-15

arxiv.org/abs/0706.2326v3

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

ApJ (Letters), in press

Scientific paper

10.1086/524948

We report the discovery of an almost complete Einstein ring of diameter 10" in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5). Spectroscopic data from the 6m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory reveals that the deflecting galaxy has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion in excess of 400 km/s and a redshift of 0.444, whilst the source is a star-forming galaxy with a redshift of 2.379. From its color and luminosity, we conclude that the lens is an exceptionally massive Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) with a mass within the Einstein radius of 5 x 10^12 solar masses. This remarkable system provides a laboratory for probing the dark matter distribution in LRGs at distances out to 3 effective radii, and studying the properties of high redshift star-forming galaxies.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Cosmic Horseshoe: Discovery of an Einstein Ring around a Giant Luminous Red Galaxy will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-549933