July 25, 2017 Pan-STARRS image of the quadruple gravitational lens candidate. The four images of the quasar are marked A-D. The lensing galaxy is very faint and it was discovered only after careful analysis of the image, its position is marked with an x. Credit: United States Naval Observatory (USNO)

Astronomers from the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) in conjunction with colleagues from the University of California, Davis, and Rutgers University have discovered the first quadruple gravitational lens candidate within data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid

Response System (Pan-STARRS) using a combination of all-sky survey data from the USNO Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

USNO graduate student George Nelson, who was performing a URAT variability study of the brightest quasars identified by USNO astronomers using WISE colors, discovered the lens while investigating the optical properties of a bright quasar sample. The paper describing this serendipitous discovery has been accepted for publication in the

Astrophysical Journal. A preprint of the paper may be found at arxiv.org/abs/1705.08359. A paper confirming the discovery by a separate team of astronomers using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. A preprint of this paper may be found at arxiv.org/abs/1707.05873.

Since the discovery of the first gravitationally lensed quasar in 1979, gravitational lenses have become powerful probes of astrophysics and cosmology. Because they require a very specific configuration between a background quasar (a bright, distant object powered by a supermassive black hole) and a foreground lensing galaxy, quadruply lensed quasars are especially rare. In fact, to date there are only about three-dozen such objects known over the entire sky.

Gravitational lenses are a manifestation of gravity's ability to bend light, which was predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1915. Since then many experiments have been carried out to test this theory starting with Sir Arthur Eddington's observations of light bending during a solar eclipse in 1919. When a galaxy acts as a gravitational lens to a background quasar, the lensed quasar appears as dual or quadruple images, depending on the relative location of the lens and the source. Lenses are rare because they require that the galaxy and the quasar be located within a few arcseconds of each other on the sky.

Gravitational lenses are at the forefront of current research in cosmology and astrophysics. In astrophysics, they have been used to uncover the structure of massive galaxies, to study how supermassive black holes relate to their host galaxies, and to gain insight into quasar accretion disks as well as their black hole spin. In cosmology, they have contributed to measuring the distribution of dark matter around galaxies and the expansion history of the universe.

Future radio, X-ray, Hubble Space Telescope and adaptive optics imaging, as well as spectroscopic studies, are already planned to further the study of this lens and to contribute to fundamental research.

Explore further: New Type Ia supernova discovered using gravitational lensing

More information: Discovery of the first quadruple gravitationally lensed quasar candidate with Pan-STARRS. arXiv. arxiv.org/abs/1705.08359

Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters arXiv

Provided by: United States Naval Observatory (USNO)

(Phys.org)Using gravitational lensing, an international team of astronomers has detected a new Type Ia supernova. The newly discovered lensed supernova was found behind the galaxy cluster known as MOO J1014+0038. The findings ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- 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.

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have discovered the first known case of a distant galaxy being magnified by ...

Astronomers have just made a new measurement of the Hubble Constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding, and it doesn't quite line up with a different estimate of the same number. That discrepancy could hint at "new ...

A quasar acting as a gravitational lens has now been observed for the first time. This discovery, made by the EPFL's Laboratory of Astrophysics in cooperation with Caltech, represents an advance in the field, since it will ...

Mini-jets of material ejected from a central supermassive black hole appear to be the culprits behind faint radio wave emissions in 'radio-quiet' quasars. A study of gravitationally lensed images of four radio-quiet quasars ...

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft makes its unprecedented series of weekly dives between Saturn and its rings, scientists are findingso farthat the planet's magnetic field has no discernable tilt. This surprising observation, ...

About eighty-five percent of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter, whose nature remains a mystery. The rest of the matter in the universe is of the kind found in atoms. Astronomers studying the evolution ...

Life has found ways to overcome, and even thrive, in many extreme situationsfrom super saline pools to the high temperatures of hydrothermal vents. A new experiment has shown that the microgravity found in space is also ...

Astronomers have used an Australian radio telescope to observe molecular signatures from stars, gas and dust in our galaxy, which could lead to the detection of complex molecules that are precursors to life.

The death of a massive star in a distant galaxy 10 billion years ago created a rare superluminous supernova that astronomers say is one of the most distant ever discovered. The brilliant explosion, more than three times as ...

Astronomers have finally solved the mystery of peculiar signals coming from a nearby star, a story that sparked intense public speculation this week that perhaps, finally, alien life had been found.

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

The rest is here:

Discovery of a rare quadruple gravitational lens candidate with Pan-STARRS - Phys.Org