Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Oct 1993
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993a%26a...278l..15w&link_type=abstract
Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 278, no. 1, p. L15-L18
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
94
Absorption Spectra, Emission Spectra, Gravitational Lenses, Quasars, Disk Galaxies, Lyman Alpha Radiation, Red Shift, Stellar Magnitude, Stellar Spectrophotometry
Scientific paper
We report the discovery of a bright double QSO at a redshift of 2.303, separated by 3 seconds, with B magnitudes of 16.70 and 18.64, respectively. Spectrophotometry reveals distinct differences betwen A and B: component A has a harder continuum but, relative to the continuum, weaker emission lines than B. However, flambda(A) - 2.8 flambda(B) yields a nearly featureless continuum, i.e., the emission line flux ratios and line profiles are identical in A and B. The observed differences are tentatively interpreted as a combination of image splitting by a macrolens with a magnification ratio of A/B = 2.8 with additional microlensing of the quasar continuum source in the brighter image. This would cause a chromatic dependence of amplification if the size of the continuum emitting region varies with wavelength. The influence on the much larger broad emission line region is small and possibly seen only in the far Lyman alpha wing. No galaxy in the line of sight brighter than R = 24 could be detected. However, component A has a damped Lyman alpha (plus Mg II, Fe II, C IV...) absorption system at z = 1.66 which in B appears only in C IV. A further Mg II system at z = 1.32 is also seen only in A. The z = 1.66 system, possibly caused by a galactic disk in the line of sight of A, might be related to the proposed microlensing. Alternatively, the pair might be a binary QSO. The macro- plus microlensing hypothesis can be tested by long-term spectrophotometric monitoring.
Kayser Rainer
Koehler Thorsten
Reimers Dieter
Wisotzki Luc
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