Hubble image archive
Quasar Lenses
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several examples of galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplifying and distorting images of galaxies aligned behind them.Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2012
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2012-14-3002-image
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several examples of galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplifying and distorting images of galaxies aligned behind them.
Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes.
To find these rare cases of galaxy-quasar combinations acting as lenses, a team of astronomers led by Frederic Courbin at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) selected 23,000 quasar spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). They looked for the spectral imprint of galaxies at much greater distances that happened to align with foreground galaxies. Once candidates were identified, Hubble's sharp view was used to look for gravitational arcs and rings (which are indicated by the arrows in these three Hubble photos) that would be produced by gravitational lensing.
Quasar host galaxies are hard or even impossible to see because the central quasar far outshines the galaxy. Therefore, it is difficult to estimate the mass of a host galaxy based on the collective brightness of its stars. However, gravitational lensing candidates are invaluable for estimating the mass of a quasar's host galaxy because the amount of distortion in the lens can be used to estimate a galaxy's mass.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and F. Courbin (EPFL, Switzerland)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | SDSS J0919+2720,SDSS J1005+4016,SDSS J0827+5224 |
| Object Description | QSO gravitational lenses on background emission-line galaxies |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from proposal : F. Courbin, G. Meylan, M. Tewes, and P. Jablonka (EPFL, Switzerland), S.G. Djorgovski and A. Mahabal (Caltech), P. Magain (Universite de Liege, Belgium), and D. Sluse (Bonn University, Germany). The science team includes: F. Courbin, C. Faure, F. Rerat, M. Tewes, and G. Meylan (EPFL, Switzerland), S.G. Djorgovski and A. Mahabal (Caltech), D. Stern (JPL), T. Boroson (NOAO), D. Sluse (Bonn University, Germany), and R. Dheeraj (University of Maryland). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | February 26 - March 12, 2011 |
| Filters | F475W (B), F814W (I) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 UVIS instrument. Several filters were used to sample various wavelength and energy ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F475W (B) Orange: F814W (I) |
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Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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