Project Summary

I am working with Dr. Moustakas on using computer-simulated gravitationally-lensed galaxies as well as data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)to see if the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Energy survey’s (DESI) fibers will be strong enough to detect them and if the software will be available to detect them in the data. A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter, ie galaxies, between a distant light source and an observer, that bends the light from the source as the light travels towards the observer and this phenomenon has been observed much less than what is predicted. We plan on seeing how far of a red shift DESI can detect gravitational lensing - if at all. The main goal of this project is to find out that whether DESI will be strong enough or observing the night sky for a long enough time to be able to detect gravitational lenses.