Gravitational lensing was first identified as a phenomenon by Einstein who predicted that light bends around massive objects in space in the same way that light bends going through a lens. “With that we could identify many thousands of lenses compared to just a few handfuls,” says Dr. The work was made possible by the development of the algorithm to look for certain digital signatures. The paper is the result of a collaboration spanning the globe with researchers from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Chile. “Our goal with AGEL is to spectroscopically confirm around 100 strong gravitational lenses that can be observed from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres throughout the year,” she says. Tran from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-Dimensions (ASTRO3D) and the University of NSW (UNSW). “Our spectroscopy allowed us to map a 3D picture of the gravitational lenses to show they are genuine and not merely chance superposition,” says corresponding author Dr. The work is part of the ASTRO 3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses (AGEL) survey. Kim-Vy Tran’s paper published today in the Astronomical Journal presents spectroscopic confirmation of strong gravitational lenses previously identified using Convolutional Neural Networks, developed by data scientist Dr Colin Jacobs at ASTRO 3D and Swinburne University. To date, gravitational lenses have been hard to find and only about a hundred are routinely used. This success rate of 88 per cent suggests that the algorithm is reliable and that we could have thousands of new gravitational lenses. She and her international team confirmed that 68 out of the 77 are strong gravitational lenses spanning vast cosmic distances. Now astronomer Kim-Vy Tran from ASTRO 3D and UNSW Sydney and colleagues have assessed 77 of the lenses using the Keck Observatory in Hawai’i and Very Large Telescope in Chile. Tran et al, 2022 (ENTER DOI)Įarlier this year a machine learning algorithm identified up to 5,000 potential gravitational lenses that could transform our ability to chart the evolution of galaxies since the Big Bang. Each panel includes the confirmed distance to the foreground galaxy (zdef) and distant background galaxy (zsrc). The pictures are centred on the foreground galaxy and include the object name. Image: Pictures of gravitational lenses from the AGEL survey.
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