2005/07/12 by D. B. Haarsma, Joshua N. Winn, J. N. Winn +13 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Gravitational lens #Physics #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Radio galaxy #Redshift #Sky #Spiral galaxy #X-shaped radio galaxy #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/466513
published in The Astronomical Journal 130(5), 1977-1995 (Institute of Physics) · 38 pages, 18 figures, aastex, accepted to AJ
arxiv created 2005/07/12 · openalex publication_date 2005/10/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present results from a survey for gravitationally lensed radio lobes. Lensed lobes are a potentially richer source of information about galaxy mass distributions than lensed point sources, which have been the exclusive focus of other recent surveys. Our approach is to identify radio lobes in the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty cm (FIRST) catalog and then search optical catalogs for coincident foreground galaxies, which are candidate lensing galaxies. We then obtain higher resolution images of these targets at both optical and radio wavelengths and obtain optical spectra for the most promising candidates. We present maps of several radio lobes that are nearly coincident with galaxies. We have not found any new and unambiguous cases of gravitational lensing. One radio lobe in particular, FOV J0743+1553, has two hot spots that could be multiple images produced by a z = 0.19 spiral galaxy, but the lensing interpretation is problematic.