Open AccessThe Planck Surveyor mission and gravitational lenses
Author(s) -
Blain A. W.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1998.01584.x
Subject(s) - physics , planck , cosmic microwave background , astronomy , galaxy , quasar , gravitational wave , astrophysics , cosmology , interferometry , sky , cosmic background radiation , anisotropy , optics
An extremely sensitive all‐sky survey will be carried out in the millimetre/submillimetre waveband by the forthcoming ESA mission Planck Surveyor . The main scientific goal of the mission is to make very accurate measurements of the spatial power spectrum of primordial anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation; however, hundreds of thousands of distant dusty galaxies and quasars will also be detected. These sources are much more likely to be gravitationally lensed by intervening galaxies compared with sources discovered in surveys in other wavebands. Here the number of lenses expected in the survey is estimated, and techniques for discriminating between lensed and unlensed sources are discussed. A practical strategy for this discrimination is presented, based on exploiting the remarkable sensitivity and resolving power of large ground‐based millimetre/submillimetre‐wave interferometer arrays. More than a thousand gravitational lenses could be detected: a sample that would be an extremely valuable resource in observational cosmology.