paper

The Top Ten List of Gravitational Lens Candidates from the HST Medium Deep Survey

arXiv:astro-ph/9902100 · doi:10.1086/300840

Abstract

A total of 10 good candidates for gravitational lensing have been discovered in the WFPC2 images from the HST Medium Deep Survey (MDS) and archival primary observations. These candidate lenses are unique HST discoveries, i.e. they are faint systems with sub-arcsecond separations between the lensing objects and the lensed source images. Most of them are difficult objects for ground-based spectroscopic confirmation or for measurement of the lens and source redshifts. Seven are ``strong lens'' candidates which appear to have multiple images of the source. Three are cases where the single image of the source galaxy has been significantly distorted into an arc. The first two quadruply lensed candidates were reported in Ratnatunga et al 1995 (ApJL, 453, L5) We report on the subsequent eight candidates and describe them with simple models based on the assumption of singular isothermal potentials. Residuals from the simple models for some of the candidates indicate that a more complex model for the potential will probably be required to explain the full structural detail of the observations once they are confirmed to be lenses. We also discuss the effective survey area which was searched for these candidate lens objects.

26 pages including 12 figures and 10 tables. AJ Vol. 117, No. 5

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