DR. ANUPREETA MORE

A massive object deflects light from a distant source, causing multiple images to form. This is called strong gravitational lensing. Gravitational lenses have a wide range of applications from cosmology to astrophysics and from mapping the (dark) matter distribution at large scales to finding planets around distant stars within our own galaxy. Finding gravitational lenses is thus very important. However, this endeavour is very challenging since gravitational lenses are rare and are difficult to identify with automated techniques. With the augmentation of large imaging surveys, development of efficient lens finding methods has become crucial to generate large lens samples. The speaker will talk about Space Warps, a citizen science project to find strong gravitational lenses. She will discuss how the system works and what it offers to provide the participating survey teams. The first lens search in Space Warps was done with the CFHT Legacy Survey data. She will talk about the scientific motivation for doing this lens search and present her first results. She will also talk about other lens searches with Space Warps, both completed and in planning.