A group of astronomers led by Tim Schrabback of the Leiden Observatory conducted an intensive study of more than 446,000 galaxies, resulting in independent confirmation that the expansion of the universe is being accelerated by the mysterious component called dark energy. In making the COSMOS survey, the largest such examination ever conducted with the Hubble Space Telescope, 575 slightly overlapping views of the same part of the universe were acquired using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the satellite. It took nearly 1000 hours of observations. In addition to the Hubble data, researchers used redshift data from ground-based telescopes to assign distances to 194,000 of the galaxies surveyed (out to a redshift of 5). “The sheer number of galaxies included in this type of analysis is unprecedented, but more important is the wealth of information we could obtain about the invisible structures in the universe from this exceptional dataset,” said coauthor Patrick Simon of Edinburgh University in the UK. In astronomy, the redshift denotes the fraction by which the lines in the spectrum of an object are shifted towards longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe. The observed redshift of a remote galaxy provides an estimate of its distance. In this study the researchers used redshift information computed by the COSMOS team using data from the SUBARU, CFHT, UKIRT, Spitzer, GALEX, NOAO, VLT and Keck telescopes. In particular, the astronomers could “weigh” the large-scale matter distribution in space over large distances. To do this, they made use of the fact that this information is encoded in the distorted shapes of distant galaxies, a phenomenon referred to as weak gravitational lensing. Using complex algorithms, Schrabback’s team improved the standard method and obtained galaxy shape measurements to an unprecedented precision. The results of the study will be published in an upcoming issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics. This image shows a smoothed reconstruction of the total (mostly dark) matter distribution in the COSMOS field, created from data acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. It was inferred from the weak gravitational lensing distortions that are imprinted onto the shapes of background galaxies. The color coding indicates the distance of the foreground mass concentrations as gathered from the weak lensing effect. Structures shown in white, cyan and green are typically closer to us than those indicated in orange and red. To improve the resolution of the map, data from galaxies both with and without redshift information were used. The new study presents the most comprehensive analysis of data from the COSMOS survey. The researchers have, for the first time ever, used Hubble and the natural “weak lenses” in space to characterize the accelerated expansion of the universe. (Photo: NASA; European Space Agency; Patrick Simon of the University of Bonn, Germany; and Tim Schrabback of Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands.) The phenomenon of gravitational lensing is the warping of spacetime by the gravitational field of a concentration of matter, such as a galaxy cluster. When light rays from distant background galaxies pass this matter concentration, their paths are bent and the galaxy images are distorted. In the case of weak lensing, these distortions are small, and must be measured statistically. This analysis provides a direct estimate for the strength of the gravitational field, and therefore the mass of the matter concentration. When determining precise shapes of galaxies, astronomers must deal with three main factors: the intrinsic shape of the galaxy (which is unknown), the gravitational lensing effect they want to measure, and systematic effects caused by the telescope and camera, as well as the atmosphere in the case of ground-based observations. Scientists need to know how the formation of clumps of matter evolved in the history of the universe to determine how the gravitational force, which holds matter together, and dark energy, which pulls it apart by accelerating the expansion of the universe, have affected them. “Dark energy affects our measurements for two reasons,” said coauthor Benjamin Joachimi of the University of Bonn in Germany. “First, when it is present, galaxy clusters grow more slowly, and secondly, it changes the way the universe expands, leading to more distant — and more efficiently lensed — galaxies. Our analysis is sensitive to both effects.” “Our study also provides an additional confirmation for Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which predicts how the lensing signal depends on redshift,” added co-investigator Martin Kilbinger of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and the Excellence Cluster Universe. The large number of galaxies included in this study, along with information on their redshifts, is leading to a clearer map of how, exactly, part of the universe is laid out; it helps us see its galactic inhabitants and how they are distributed. “With more accurate information about the distances to the galaxies, we can measure the distribution of the matter between them and us more accurately,” said co-investigator Jan Hartlap of the University of Bonn. “Before, most of the studies were done in 2-D, like taking a chest x-ray. Our study is more like a 3-D reconstruction of the skeleton from a CT scan” said William High of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., another coauthor. “On top of that, we are able to watch the skeleton of dark matter mature from the universe’s youth to the present.” The astronomers specifically chose the COSMOS survey because it is thought to be a representative sample of the universe. With thorough studies such as the one led by Schrabback, astronomers will one day be able to apply the technique to wider areas of the sky, forming a clearer picture of what is truly out there. For more information, visit: www.strw.leidenuniv.nl