No Arabic abstract
We report the discovery of a partial Einstein ring of radius 1.48arcsec produced by a massive (and seemingly isolated) elliptical galaxy. The spectroscopic follow-up at the VLT reveals a 2L* galaxy at z=0.986, which is lensing a post-starburst galaxy at z=3.773. This unique configuration yields a very precise measure of the mass of the lens within the Einstein radius, (8.3e11 +- 0.4)/h70 Msolar. The fundamental plane relation indicates an evolution rate of d [log (M/L)B] / dz = -0.57+-0.04, similar to other massive ellipticals at this redshift. The source galaxy shows strong interstellar absorption lines indicative of large gas-phase metallicities, with fading stellar populations after a burst. Higher resolution spectra and imaging will allow the detailed study of an unbiased representative of the galaxy population when the universe was just 12% of its current age.
A deep spectrum taken with the Echelle Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) at the Keck II Telescope as part of the Lenses Structure and Dynamics (LSD) Survey reveals the redshifts of the extremely red source of the radio Einstein Ring in the gravitational lens system MG1549+305 ($z_{rm s}=1.170pm 0.001$) and an intermediate redshift lensed spiral galaxy ($z_{rm G2}=0.604pm 0.001$). The source redshift allows us to determine the mass of the SB0 lens galaxy enclosed by the Einstein Radius ($R_{rm E}=1farcs15pm0farcs05$) $M_{rm E}$$equiv$$M(<R_{rm E}) = 8.4pm0.7times 10^{10} h_{65}^{-1}$ M$_odot$. This corresponds to a Singular Isothermal Ellipsoid (SIE) velocity dispersion $sigma_{rm SIE}=214pm5$ kms, in good agreement with the measured stellar velocity dispersion $sigma=227pm18$ kms (Lehar et al. 1996). The mass-to-light ratio within the Einstein Radius ($sim$1.4 effective radii) is $10pm1 h_{65}$ mlu. This is only marginally larger than typical stellar mass-to-light ratios of local early-type galaxies, indicating that dark matter is not likely to be dominant inside the Einstein Radius.
MG 1131+0456 is a radio-selected gravitational lens, and is the first known Einstein ring. Discovered in 1988, the system consists of a bright radio source imaged into a ring and two compact, flat-spectrum components separated by 2.1 arcsec. The ring is optically faint (R = 23.3), rising steeply into the near- and mid-infrared (K = 17.8; W2 = 13.4). The system has been intensively studied in the intervening years, including high-resolution radio imaging, radio monitoring, and near-infrared imaging with Hubble and Keck. The lensing galaxy is at z(lens) = 0.844. However, to date, no spectroscopic redshift had been reported for the lensed source. Using archival Keck data from 1997, we report the robust detection of a single narrow emission line at 5438 Angstroms, which we associate with CIII] 1909 from a type-2 quasar at z(source) = 1.849. Support for this redshift identification comes from weaker emission associated with CIV 1549 and HeII 1640, typical of type-2 quasars, as well as the lack of emission lines in archival near-infrared Keck spectroscopy. We also present, for the first time, Cycle 1 Chandra observations of MG 1131+0456, which clearly resolves into two point sources with a combined flux of ~1e-13 erg/cm2/s and a best-fit column density of ~3e22 /cm2. We suggest a new method to identify candidate lensed active galactic nuclei from low-resolution X-ray surveys such as eROSITA by targeting sources that have anomalously high X-ray luminosity given their mid-infrared luminosity.
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.
We present Chandra X-ray observations of 14 radio-loud quasars at redshifts $3 < z < 4$, selected from a well-defined sample. All quasars are detected in the 0.5-7.0 keV energy band, and resolved X-ray features are detected in five of the objects at distances of 1-12 from the quasar core. The X-ray features are spatially coincident with known radio features for four of the five quasars. This indicates that these systems contain X-ray jets. X-ray fluxes and luminosities are measured, and jet-to-core X-ray flux ratios are estimated. The flux ratios are consistent with those observed for nearby jet systems, suggesting that the observed X-ray emission mechanism is independent of redshift. For quasars with undetected jets, an upper limit on the average X-ray jet intensity is estimated using a stacked image analysis. Emission spectra of the quasar cores are extracted and modeled to obtain best-fit photon indices, and an Fe K emission line is detected from one quasar in our sample. We compare X-ray spectral properties with optical and radio emission in the context of both our sample and other quasar surveys.
The Chandra Multiwavelength Project (ChaMP) has discovered a jet-like structure associated with a newly recognized QSO at redshift z=1.866. The system was 9.4 arcmin off-axis during an observation of 3C 207. Although significantly distorted by the mirror PSF, we use both a raytrace and a nearby bright point source to show that the X-ray image must arise from some combination of point and extended sources, or else from a minimum of three distinct point sources. We favor the former situation, as three unrelated sources would have a small probability of occurring by chance in such a close alignment. We show that interpretation as a jet emitting X-rays via inverse Compton (IC) scattering on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is plausible. This would be a surprising and unique discovery of a radio-quiet QSO with an X-ray jet, since we have obtained upper limits of 100 microJy on the QSO emission at 8.46 GHz, and limits of 200 microJy for emission from the putative jet.