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Lens Simulations

January
100-frame short segments of MPEG movies depict our view, over the next half billion years, of a cluster of galaxies and the effects of its dark matter.

Two simulations of strong lensing by a massive cluster of galaxies. In the first image, all the dark matter is clumped around individual cluster galaxies (orange), causing a particular distortion of the background galaxies (white and blue). In the second image, the same amount of mass is more smoothly distributed over the cluster, causing a very different distortion pattern.

These movies show the evolution of the distortion as the clusters move against the background over half billion years. 

Credit: 
Ayana Arce (Duke U.) and Tony Tyson (UC Davis)
File LENS0_hires.mpg
File LENSMAX_hires.mpg

Financial support for Rubin Observatory comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Cooperative Agreement No. 1258333, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515, and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation. The NSF-funded Rubin Observatory Project Office for construction was established as an operating center under management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).  The DOE-funded effort to build the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (LSSTCam) is managed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.
NSF and DOE will continue to support Rubin Observatory in its Operations phase. They will also provide support for scientific research with LSST data.   




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