Space Warps - DES

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the beta test! We are now going through what we found, but we thought we would share some of the results from it so far! Firstly, some of the high scoring candidates found:

Subject 72108942 - this is a known lens candidate (thanks @Budgieye for tracking it down! https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/abd62b) with the identifier DESI-031.7778–27.4457. The lens galaxy has been estimated to be at a redshift of 0.29 which means we’re seeing this galaxy as it was around 3 billion years ago! The light from the source has been bent significantly as it passed the lens, producing the blue arc around the lens.

Subject 72108935 - there is a blue arc on the left hand side of the lensing galaxy with a small blue counter-image on the right hand side which makes this candidate more likely to be a lensing system:

Subject 72108921 - the blue arc at the top follows the curve of the central galaxy (the mass of the lensing galaxy bends the light from the source as it passes it, causing an arc.)

And now for a few trickier subjects!
Subject 72108883: This subject is likely to be a spiral galaxy - it is quite elongated and the bluer edge appears to go almost all the way round the redder centre. It is likely the redder centre is the central bulge of the galaxy, while the bluer regions are the spiral arms which we are viewing at an angle.

Subject 72108866: This is unlikely to be a lensing candidate as the bluer regions appear to be directed away from the central galaxy. If lensing produces an arc, you would expect it to be wrapped around the central lens, rather than directed away from it.

We hope you enjoyed taking part in the beta test - Space Warps DES will be back soon with lots more lenses to find!

Phil H @philholloway for the SW DES Team