Quadruply lensed quasar

Interesting things
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https://www.legacysurvey.org//viewer/?ra=151.1426&dec=41.2123&layer=ls-dr9&zoom=15

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@tombickle Hubble took an image of this galaxy and it did say it was a gravitational imaged galaxy.
Screenshot 2022-10-29 2.52.38 PM

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And a supernova to boot!

Awesome

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Huh, cool. Lens arcs just arent visible in DECaLS as its not high res enough.

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Hi Tom,

Please be careful making such definitive claims here, other members might take these for a fact.

No one knows everything for certain and a little bit of research would have taken you to the HST observations.

  • Alexander
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Ironically, basic research would have told me it was a lens, but wouldn’t have taken me to the the HST image. None of the multiple simbad refs related to this group have any references mentioning HST, so I’d have had to go looking on Hubblesite or something.

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Hi tombickle,

In case it wasn’t clear to you, my request wasn’t an invitation to start an argument, I suggest you act accordingly.

  • Alexander
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Hi AFJ,

In case it wasn’t clear to you, my response wasn’t an attempt to start an argument; it was simply a response to a point I disagreed with. Disagreeing =/= arguing.

I agree that my use of ‘definitely’ was incorrect in this case, but your condescension feels unnecessary considering that it’s a completely unique lensing structure (according to hubblesite itself) , you can count on one hand such systems with as high separation, and the arced lensing effect can’t be seen by DECaLS (which was the only information I was going on, since hubblesite hadn’t been linked at that time). The vast majority of the threads on this forum consist of people commenting on something they’ve seen in DECaLS, and people generally link the HST image if they’re showing something imaged by it, so I don’t think my assumption that the former was the case was unreasonable.

But point taken - I won’t use ‘definitely’ for cases where I’m not certain.

-Tom

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For what it’s worth, my initial reaction was also “sorry, no way that’s a lens – the images are too far from the primary, which doesn’t look big enough to be such a strong lens”. Maybe if I had looked closer I would have seen the other same deep-red galaxies and realized it’s a cluster – cluster lensing can be much more dramatic – but I think it was a fair off-the-cuff response. Upon getting new information, I think all we can do is admit we were wrong, (maybe try to look a bit more carefully, or not use quite-so-definite language in the future), and marvel at the amazing things the universe can do!
(As a side note: it’s experiences like this that make scientists use “weasel words” and avoid making definitive statements so much!)
cheers,
dustin

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