1998/01/29 by B. A. McLeod, G. M. Bernstein, Marcia Rieke +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/300285
18 pages, including 7 figures, to appear in Astronomical Journal, April 1988
arxiv created 1998/01/29 · openalex publication_date 1998/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present near-IR observations of the red gravitational lens system MG 0414+0534. Our images are of sufficient quality to allow photometry of all four QSO images and the lens galaxy. The observations show that the K -band brightnesses of the components are more similar to the radio brightnesses than to the optical and thus support the notion that the system is highly reddened. The differing brightnesses at visible wavelengths are interpreted as variable amounts of extinction in the lens galaxy. The lens galaxy is detected in the K band and is as red as any other known galaxy of comparable apparent magnitude. An estimate of the redshift of the lens galaxy of 0.45 < z < 0.6 is determined from the Faber-Jackson relation and photometric considerations. By extension, we argue that other very red field galaxies may contain large amounts of dust. K -band spectra of the individual components show no difference in the Hα equivalent widths among the components. This is evidence against significant microlensing.