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Published April 10, 1996 | Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Luminous IRAS Source FSC 10214+4724: A Gravitationally Lensed Infrared Quasar

Abstract

With a redshift of 2.3, the IRAS source FSC 10214+4724 is apparently one of the most luminous objects known in the universe. We present an image of FSC 10214+4724 at 0.8 μm obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 Planetary Camera. The source appears as an unresolved ( < 0".06) arc 0".7 long, with significant substructure along its length. The center of curvature of the arc is located near an elliptical galaxy 1".18 to the north. An unresolved component 100 times fainter than the arc is clearly detected on the opposite side of this galaxy. The most straightforward interpretation is that FSC 10214+4724 is gravitationally lensed by the foreground elliptical galaxy, with the faint component a counterimage of the IRAS source. The brightness of the arc in the HST image is then magnified by ~ 100, and the intrinsic source diameter is -0".01 (80 pc) at 0.25 μm rest wavelength. The bolometric luminosity is probably amplified by a smaller factor ( ~ 30) as a result of the larger extent expected for the source in the far-infrared. A detailed lensing model is presented that reproduces the observed morphology and relative flux of the arc and counterimage and correctly predicts the position angle of the lensing galaxy. The model also predicts reasonable values for the velocity dispersion, mass, and mass-to-light ratio of the lensing galaxy for a wide range of galaxy redshifts. A redshift for the lensing galaxy of ~ 0.9 is consistent with the measured surface brightness profile from the image, as well as with the galaxy's spectral energy distribution. The background lensed source has an intrinsic luminosity ~ 2 x 10^(13) L_⊙ and remains a highly luminous quasar with an extremely large ratio of infrared to optical/ultraviolet luminosity.

Additional Information

© 1995. American Astronomical Society. Received 1995 July 17; accepted 1995 October 12. We thank Mark Dickinson for help with the R_e - <μ_(B)>_(e) technique for estimating z and in particular for supplying the Sandage & Perelmutter data in electronic form, Adam Stanford for calculating K-corrections and general assistance with STSDAS, and Roger Blandford for help with lens modeling. We acknowledge helpful discussions with James Graham, Michael Liu, Tom Broadhurst, Joseph Lehar, and Joseph Miller. The ideas of rotating (rather than merely flipping) component 2 in § 3.2 and of a magnification versus radius plot (cf. Fig. 5) were suggested by Broadhurst and Lehar. An anonymous referee reminded us of the sensitivity of the derived magnification to the isothermal profile assumption. This research was supported by NASA through a grant awarded by STScI, which is operated by AURA under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. Portions of the research described in this paper were carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA.

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Published - 1996ApJ___461___72E.pdf

Accepted Version - 9510093.pdf

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August 22, 2023
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