TY - JOUR
T1 - Lensing in the Blue. II. Estimating the Sensitivity of Stratospheric Balloons to Weak Gravitational Lensing
AU - McCleary, Jacqueline E.
AU - Everett, Spencer W.
AU - Shaaban, Mohamed M.
AU - Gill, Ajay S.
AU - Vassilakis, Georgios N.
AU - Huff, Eric M.
AU - Massey, Richard J.
AU - Benton, Steven J.
AU - Brown, Anthony M.
AU - Clark, Paul
AU - Holder, Bradley
AU - Fraisse, Aurelien A.
AU - Jauzac, Mathilde
AU - Jones, William C.
AU - Lagattuta, David
AU - Leung, Jason S.Y.
AU - Li, Lun
AU - Thuy, Thuy Vy
AU - Nagy, Johanna M.
AU - Netterfield, C. Barth
AU - Paracha, Emaad
AU - Redmond, Susan F.
AU - Rhodes, Jason D.
AU - Schmoll, Jürgen
AU - Sirks, Ellen
AU - Tam, Sut Ieng
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/9/1
Y1 - 2023/9/1
N2 - The Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m, near-infrared to near-ultraviolet observatory designed to exploit the stratosphere’s space-like conditions. SuperBIT’s 2023 science flight will deliver deep, blue imaging of galaxy clusters for gravitational lensing analysis. In preparation, we have developed a weak-lensing measurement pipeline with modern algorithms for PSF characterization, shape measurement, and shear calibration. We validate our pipeline and forecast SuperBIT survey properties with simulated galaxy cluster observations in SuperBIT’s near-UV and blue bandpasses. We predict imaging depth, galaxy number (source) density, and redshift distribution for observations in SuperBIT’s three bluest filters; the effect of lensing sample selections is also considered. We find that, in three hours of on-sky integration, SuperBIT can attain a depth of b = 26 mag and a total source density exceeding 40 galaxies per square arcminute. Even with the application of lensing-analysis catalog selections, we find b-band source densities between 25 and 30 galaxies per square arcminute with a median redshift of z = 1.1. Our analysis confirms SuperBIT’s capability for weak gravitational lensing measurements in the blue.
AB - The Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m, near-infrared to near-ultraviolet observatory designed to exploit the stratosphere’s space-like conditions. SuperBIT’s 2023 science flight will deliver deep, blue imaging of galaxy clusters for gravitational lensing analysis. In preparation, we have developed a weak-lensing measurement pipeline with modern algorithms for PSF characterization, shape measurement, and shear calibration. We validate our pipeline and forecast SuperBIT survey properties with simulated galaxy cluster observations in SuperBIT’s near-UV and blue bandpasses. We predict imaging depth, galaxy number (source) density, and redshift distribution for observations in SuperBIT’s three bluest filters; the effect of lensing sample selections is also considered. We find that, in three hours of on-sky integration, SuperBIT can attain a depth of b = 26 mag and a total source density exceeding 40 galaxies per square arcminute. Even with the application of lensing-analysis catalog selections, we find b-band source densities between 25 and 30 galaxies per square arcminute with a median redshift of z = 1.1. Our analysis confirms SuperBIT’s capability for weak gravitational lensing measurements in the blue.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-3881/ace7ca
DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/ace7ca
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85170687633
SN - 0004-6256
VL - 166
JO - Astronomical Journal
JF - Astronomical Journal
IS - 3
M1 - 134
ER -