SDSS J024634.11-082536.2: A New Gravitationally Lensed Quasar from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We report the discovery of a new two-image gravitationally lensed quasar,SDSS J024634.11-082536.2 (SDSS J0246-0825). This object was selected as alensed quasar candidate from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by the samealgorithm that was used to discover other SDSS lensed quasars (e.g., SDSSJ0924+0219). Multicolor imaging with the Magellan Consortium's Walter Baade6.5-m telescope and the spectroscopic observations using the W. M. KeckObservatory's Keck II telescope confirm that SDSS J0246-0825 consists of twolensed images ($\Delta{\theta}=$1\farcs04) of a source quasar at z=1.68.Imaging observations with the Keck telescope and the Hubble Space Telescopereveal an extended object between the two quasar components, which is likely tobe a lensing galaxy of this system. From the absorption lines in the spectra ofquasar components and the apparent magnitude of the galaxy, combined with theexpected absolute magnitude from the Faber-Jackson relation, we estimate theredshift of the lensing galaxy to be z=0.724. A highly distorted ring isvisible in the Hubble Space Telescope images, which is likely to be the lensedhost galaxy of the source quasar. Simple mass modeling predicts the possibilitythat there is a small (faint) lensing object near the primary lensing galaxy.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, The Astronomical Journal accepte