Lensing in the Blue IV: The First Weak Gravitational Lensing Maps from the Stratosphere

Sayan Saha; Maya Amit; Jacqueline E. McCleary; Georgios N. Vassilakis; Emaad Paracha; Giulia Cerini; Spencer W. Everett; Leila Ohashi; Eric M. Huff; Gavin Leroy; Leo W. H. Fung; Richard Massey; Steven J. Benton; William C. Jones; Thuy Vy T. Luu; Ajay S. Gill; Mohamed M. Shaaban; Philippe Voyer; Adam Field; Adam Aoua; Anthony M. Brown; Paul Clark; Matthew Craigie; Christopher J. Damaren; Tim Eifler; David Harvey; Eric Habjan; John W. Hartley; Bradley Holder; Mathilde Jauzac; David Lagattuta; Jason S. -Y. Leung; Lun Li; Johanna M. Nagy; C. Barth Netterfield; Susan F. Redmond; Jason D. Rhodes; Andrew Robertson; L. Javier Romualdez; Jürgen Schmoll; Ellen Sirks; Sut Ieng Tam; Karuna Tarafdar; André Z. Vitorelli; Alfredo Zenteno

arXiv · 2610.07244

Lensing in the Blue IV: The First Weak Gravitational Lensing Maps from the Stratosphere

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The Super-Pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) completed its science flight in April 2023, obtaining imaging data for 30 galaxy clusters. In this work, we present the first weak-lensing convergence maps from these observations, using six clusters selected from the 30 targets. We construct background-galaxy catalogs using SuperBIT's three-band photometry and a color-color-based method to separate foreground and background galaxies, and use the calibrated galaxy shapes presented in Lensing in the Blue III to reconstruct the weak-lensing convergence field using Kaiser-Squires inversion. We compare the convergence signal-to-noise maps for the six clusters with independent tracers, including X-ray emission and red-sequence cluster-member number-density maps. These results demonstrate the first successful weak-lensing mass mapping with imaging from a sub-orbital astronomical observatory.

Explore related subjects

astro-ph.CO

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Sayan Saha, Maya Amit, Jacqueline E. McCleary, Georgios N. Vassilakis, Emaad Paracha, Giulia Cerini, Spencer W. Everett, Leila Ohashi, Eric M. Huff, Gavin Leroy, Leo W. H. Fung, Richard Massey, Steven J. Benton, William C. Jones, Thuy Vy T. Luu, Ajay S. Gill, Mohamed M. Shaaban, Philippe Voyer, Adam Field, Adam Aoua, Anthony M. Brown, Paul Clark, Matthew Craigie, Christopher J. Damaren, Tim Eifler, David Harvey, Eric Habjan, John W. Hartley, Bradley Holder, Mathilde Jauzac, David Lagattuta, Jason S. -Y. Leung, Lun Li, Johanna M. Nagy, C. Barth Netterfield, Susan F. Redmond, Jason D. Rhodes, Andrew Robertson, L. Javier Romualdez, Jürgen Schmoll, Ellen Sirks, Sut Ieng Tam, Karuna Tarafdar, André Z. Vitorelli, Alfredo Zenteno. 2026-10-05. Lensing in the Blue IV: The First Weak Gravitational Lensing Maps from the Stratosphere. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07244

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Cosmological constraining power of the redshifts, heights, and angular clustering of weak gravitational lensing peaks

Weak gravitational lensing (WL) peaks probe non-Gaussian information of the large-scale distribution of matter that is not captured by two-point lensing statistics. We study the cosmological potential of the height distribution, redshift distribution, and angular clustering of high-valued WL peaks using a Bayesian inference approach that mimics a $\textit{Euclid}$ analysis. We use a forthcoming dark-matter-only hypercube, which varies cosmology in a ten-dimensional space, including evolving dark energy, neutrino mass, decaying dark matter, and the running of the scalar spectral index. We find the individual WL peak statistics to be complementary, as the redshift distribution best constrains the matter density, $Ω_\mathrm{m}$, and the dark energy equation-of-state parameters, $w_0$, and $w_a$; the height distribution and angular clustering are most sensitive to the amplitude of the primordial power spectrum, $\ln(10^{10}A_\mathrm{s})$; while combining the three statistics allows us to also probe the baryon density, $Ω_\mathrm{b}$, and the Hubble parameter, $h$. A comparison to the shear two-point correlation function demonstrates that WL peaks alone outperform the commonly used statistics, while even tighter constraints are obtained when combining all. Considering the 2-dimensional $Ω_\mathrm{m}-\ln(10^{10}A_\mathrm{s})$ and $w_0-w_a$ parameter planes, we find that the redshift distribution outperforms the angular clustering and peak-height distributions. We study the impact of the smoothing scale and find that, typically, the smallest scales yield the best results and the figure of merit improves by a factor $\approx2$ when combining multiple scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Gravitational-Susceptibility Dip Behind DESI's results: Addressing the Phantom Crossing by Local limit of Nonlocal Gravity

The second data release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), based on more than fourteen million galaxies and quasars, prefers a dark energy component whose equation of state is dynamical. In the simplest two-parameter description of this behavior, the Chevallier--Polarski--Linder (CPL) parametrization, the data favor the quadrant $w_0>-1$, $w_a<0$, which implies that the equation of state crosses the phantom divide $w=-1$ at a redshift $z\simeq0.4$. We show that the local limit of nonlocal gravity, a teleparallel extension of general relativity governed by a scalar function called gravitational susceptibility $S(x)$, offers a natural explanation. In this model a cosmological constant is not allowed; dark energy is necessarily dynamical. The phantom crossing seen by an observer is an effective phenomenon generated by the time evolution of $S(z)$. We establish a correspondence: to every general-relativistic dark energy model with equation of state $w(z)$, there corresponds a modified TEGR cosmology with $w=-1$ and a suitable susceptibility $S(z)$ that are indistinguishable at the level of the background expansion. We construct the susceptibility functions that reproduce the CPL behavior favored by DESI data, and we confront the model with the combined CMB,BAO, and SNe data using Boltzmann solver codes. The recovered susceptibility displays a characteristic low-redshift dip with depth $β= -0.025 \pm 0.007$ at $z\simeq 0.4 $, and its derivative changes sign at a redshift equal to the phantom-crossing epoch.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Galaxy Clustering Can Reveal Host-Galaxy Properties of Binary Black Hole Mergers

Galaxy clustering encodes information about the host galaxies of binary black hole (BBH) mergers even when individual hosts remain unidentified, because the distribution of neighboring galaxies depends statistically on the host-galaxy population. We construct event-level host-type likelihoods from host-conditioned galaxy-count distributions within gravitational-wave localization regions and combine them to infer the fractions of BBH mergers hosted by different galaxy populations. The framework applies to common and rare galaxy populations without prescribing formation efficiencies or merger delay-time distributions. Using measured star-forming and quenched galaxy clustering, idealized one-year forecasts assuming all mergers occur in quenched galaxies yield median one-sided 90% lower credible limits of 0.19, 0.48, and 0.92 on the quenched-host fraction for O5, post-O5, and third-generation networks. These forecasts illustrate the potential for host-galaxy population inference before the third-generation detector era.

astro-ph.CO↗