Weak Lensing PSF Correction of Wide-field CCD Mosaic Images (SULI Paper)
Gravitational lensing provides some of the most compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter. Dark matter on galaxy cluster scales can be mapped due to its weak gravitational lensing effect: a cluster mass distribution can be inferred from the net distortion of many thousands of faint background galaxies that it induces. Because atmospheric aberration and defects in the detector distort the apparent shape of celestial objects, it is of great importance to characterize accurately the point spread function (PSF) across an image. In this research, the PSF is studied in images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), whose camera is divided into 12 CCD chips. Traditional weak lensing methodology involves averaging the PSF across the entire image: in this work we investigate the effects of measuring the PSF in each chip independently. This chip-by-chip analysis was found to reduce the strength of the correlation between star and galaxy shapes, and predicted more strongly the presence of known galaxy clusters in mass maps. These results suggest correcting the CFHT PSF on an individual chip basis significantly improves the accuracy of detecting weak lensing.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 877995
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-TN-05-063; TRN: US200609%%107
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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