Related papers: Characterizing SL2S galaxy groups using the Einste…

We report the discovery of seven new, very bright gravitational lens systems from our ongoing gravitational lens search, the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey (SBAS). Two of the systems are confirmed to have high source redshifts z=2.19 and z=2.94.…

We have worked out simple analytical formulae that accurately approximate the relationship between the position of the source with respect to the lens center and the amplification of the images, hence the lens cross section, for realistic…

We report the discovery of a new gravitational lens system from the CLASS survey, CLASS B0631+519. VLA, MERLIN and VLBA observations show a doubly-imaged radio core, a doubly-imaged lobe and a second lobe that is probably quadruply-imaged.…

We measure the intrinsic relation between velocity dispersion ($\sigma$) and luminosity ($L$) for massive, luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at redshift $z \sim 0.55$. We achieve unprecedented precision by using a sample of 600,000 galaxies with…

Based on techniques developed in the previous papers of this series, we investigate the impact of galaxy-cluster mergers on the order statistics of the largest Einstein radii. We show that the inclusion of mergers significantly shifts the…

Context. Strong lenses are a biased subset of the general population of galaxies. Aims. The goal of this work is to quantify how lens galaxies and lensed sources differ from their parent distribution, namely the strong lensing bias.…

We present a statistical analysis of a sample of 20 strong lensing clusters drawn from the Local Cluster Substructure Survey (LoCuSS), based on high resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the cluster cores and follow-up spectroscopic…

The galaxy cluster SRGe CL2305.2$-$2248 (SPT-CL J2305$-$2248, ACT-CL J2305.1$-$2248) is one of the most massive clusters at high redshifts ($z \simeq 0.76$) and is of great interest for cosmology. For an optical identification of this…

We report the discovery of a new Einstein cross at redshift z_S = 2.701 based on Lyman-alpha emission in a cruciform configuration around an SDSS luminous red galaxy (z_L = 0.331). The system was targeted as a possible lens based on an…

We present new VLT observations of the closest-known strong-lensing galaxy, the sigma=330 km/s giant elliptical ESO325-G004. The low redshift of the lens (z_lens=0.035) results in arcs being formed at a small fraction of the effective…

In a systematic search over 11 cluster fields from Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) we identify ten passively evolving massive galaxies at redshift z~2.We derive the stellar properties of these galaxies using HST…

We have measured a velocity dispersion for the foreground galaxy in this gravitationally lensed system. Our dispersion confirms the prediction from lens models, provided that the source is distant enough ($z_{_S}>0.2$). Current…

We present observational results from a new Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Snapshot program to extend the methods of the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey to lower lens-galaxy masses. We discover 40 new galaxy-scale strong lenses, which we…

I report discovery of a new galaxy-scale gravitational lens system, identified using public data from the MaNGA survey, as part of a systematic search for lensed background line-emitters. The lens is SDSS J170124.01+372258.0, a giant…

We use gravitational lenses from the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS) to constrain the evolution of galaxies since redshift $z \sim 1$ in the current $\LCDM$ cosmology. This constraint is unique as it is based on a mass-selected lens…

We study a sample of ~10^4 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.2<z<0.8 with masses M_200 > 5x10^13 h_70^-1 M_sun, discovered in the second Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS2). The depth and excellent image quality of the RCS2 enable us…

We determine the evolution of the galaxy luminosity function (LF) as a function of spectral type using the Autofib redshift survey, a compendium of over 1700 galaxy redshifts in various magnitude-limited samples spanning b_J=11.5-24.0. To…

JWST has made several surprising discoveries, underscored by the `too early' appearance of well-formed galaxies and supermassive black holes. It recently also uncovered a compact galaxy (JWST-ER1g) associated with a complete Einstein ring…

We consider strong gravitational lensing by nearby stars. Using our wave-optical treatment of lensing phenomena, we study Einstein rings that may form around nearby stellar lenses. It is remarkable that these rings are bright and large…

(Abridged) We present our VLT/FORS1 deep spectroscopic observations of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J0924+0219, as well as archival HST/NICMOS and ACS images of the same object. The two-epoch spectra, obtained in the Multi Object…