Abstract
New optical and radio observations of the gravitational lens system 2016
+ 112 are presented. Deep optical images reveal the presence of an
extremely red galaxy located in the midst of the three radio positions.
There is no evidence for a cluster of galaxies in the region; the
lensing appears to be dominated by the new galaxy and the galaxy
associated with the third radio source. The A image has remained
constant in brightness since its discovery nearly a year ago, but B has
faded by about 0.3 mag. A new spectrum of B shows that the equivalent
widths of its emission lines have increased by roughly a factor of 2. A
wide-field radio map shows that the postulated third image must either
be more than 100 times fainter than A and B, or else lie close to one of
the detected radio sources. The discovery of the new lensing mass makes
the geometry of this lens system somewhat easier to understand, but no
model based only on idealized mass distributions at the locations of the
two known galaxies can explain all the observed properties.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 66-69 |
Journal | Astrophysical Journal |
Volume | 294 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 1985 |