Lensing in the Blue. III. Weak-lensing Shape Catalogs of 30 Merging Galaxy Clusters
Abstract
Abstract We present the weak gravitational lensing dataset from the Super-pressure Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT), which imaged 30 galaxy clusters during its 45 night flight in 2023 April–May. SuperBIT is a first-of-its-kind balloon-borne imaging telescope that achieved near-diffraction-limited observations in near-space conditions above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere. We use the metacalibration algorithm to obtain calibrated galaxy shapes for our target clusters and several calibration fields, enabling unbiased reconstruction of the weak-lensing signal. We employ several diagnostics throughout the pipeline, including assessments of point-spread function (PSF) modeling residuals and their impact on weak-lensing measurements, as well as tests for correlations between galaxy shapes and measured galaxy and PSF properties. To assess the multiplicative shear bias of the pipeline, we analyze a parallel set of simulated images that incorporate the real observing conditions from the flight, including measured SuperBIT PSFs, observed sky backgrounds, and detector noise, yielding a bias of (1.54% ± 6.00%).
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Authors: Sayan Saha, Jacqueline McCleary, Spencer Everett, Maya Amit, Georgios N. Vassilakis, Emaad Paracha, Leo W H Fung, Steven J. Benton, William C. Jones, Gavin Leroy, Eric M. Huff, Richard Massey, Thuy Vy T. Luu, Ajay Gill, Mohamed M. Shaaban, Philippe Voyer, Anthony M. Brown, Giulia Cerini, Paul Clark, Matthew Craigie, Christopher John Damaren, T. F. Eifler, David Harvey, Eric Habjan, John W. Hartley, Bradley Holder, Mathilde Jauzac, David J. Lagattuta, Jason S.-Y. Leung, Lun Li, Johanna M. Nagy, C. Barth Netterfield, Susan F. Redmond, Jason D. Rhodes, Andrew Robertson, Luis Javier Romualdez, Jürgen Schmoll, Ellen Sirks, Sut-Ieng Tam, A Z Vitorelli, A. Zenteno
Institutions: Imperial College London, Northeastern University, University of Toronto, Case Western Reserve University, University of Arizona, New York University, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, University of Cambridge, Durham University, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Princeton University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, California Institute of Technology, NSF NOIRLab, National Research Council Canada, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory