2006/11/15 by Ian Smail, A. M. Swinbank, J. Richard +13 · 97 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Cluster (spacecraft) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Lens (geology) #Optics #Physics #Redshift #Spectroscopy #Surface brightness #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/510902
published in The Astrophysical Journal 654(1), L33-L36 (IOP Publishing) · In press at ApJL, 4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2006/11/15 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Using Hubble Space Telescope imaging and Keck spectroscopy, we report the discovery of a very bright, highly magnified (~30 times) Lyman break galaxy (LBG) at z = 3.07 in the field of the massive z = 0.33 cluster MACS J2135.2-0102. The system comprises two high surface brightness arcs with a maximum extent of 3'', bracketing a central object that we identify as a massive early-type galaxy at z = 0.73. We construct a lens model that reproduces the main features of the system using a combination of a galaxy-scale lens and the foreground cluster. We show that the morphological, spectral, and photometric properties of the arcs are consistent with them arising from the lensing of a single ~ L LBG. The most important feature of this system is that the lensing magnification results in an apparent magnitude of r = 20.3, making this one of the brightest LBGs known. Such a high magnification provides the opportunity of obtaining very high signal-to-noise ratio (and potentially spatially resolved) spectroscopy of a high-redshift galaxy to study its physical properties. We present initial imaging and spectroscopy demonstrating the basic properties of the system and discuss the opportunities for future observations.