A New Wide-Separation Gravitational Lens Candidate: RXJ 0921+4529

Munoz, J. A.; Falco, E. E.; Kochanek, C. S.; McLeod, B. A.; Lehar, J.; McNamara, B. R.; Vikhlinin, A. A.; Impey, C. D.; Keeton, C. R.; Peng, C. Y.; Rix, H. -W.

A New Wide-Separation Gravitational Lens Candidate: RXJ 0921+4529

Authors

Description

The lens candidate RXJ 0921+4529 consists of two z_s=1.66 quasar separated by 6."93 with an H band magnitude difference of Δm=1.39. The lens appears to be a z_l=0.31 X-ray cluster, including a m_H=18.5 late-type galaxy lying between the quasar images. We detect an extended source overlapping the faint quasar but not the bright quasar. If this extended source is the host galaxy of the fainter quasar, then the system is a quasar binary rather than a gravitational lens.
To appear in "Gravitational Lensing: Recent Progress and Future Goals", ASP conference series, eds Brainerd & Kochanek