Quasars As Gravitational Lenses

Quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest objects in the universe, outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Quasar host galaxies are hard or even impossible to see because the central quasar far outshines the galaxy. Therefore, it is difficult to estimate the mass of a host galaxy based on the collective brightness of its stars. However, gravitational lensing candidates are invaluable for estimating the mass of a quasar's host galaxy because the amount of distortion in the lens can be used to estimate a galaxy's mass. read more

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