Abstract
Gravitational lensing is a useful tool for studying the mass distribution in galaxies. The average gravitational lens distortion of background galaxy images by foreground galaxies is an independent non-kinematical measurement of galaxy mass distribution M/r (ref. 1), where M is the mass of the galaxy and r its radius. Using an indirect calculation involving estimated luminosity functions and absolute magnitudes, Phillipps2 recently claimed that our measurement of field galaxy mass distribution by galaxy-galaxy gravitational lensing was contaminated by large numbers of foreground dwarf galaxies. I present here a direct measurement of this effect: the cross-correlation between these samples clearly reveals clustering of foreground dwarf galaxies, with an amplitude slightly less than that given by our original simulation1. Thus, this effect does not change our conclusions regarding the average galaxy mass distribution.
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References
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Tyson, J. Image distortion near galaxies: dwarfs or lensing?. Nature 316, 799–800 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/316799a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/316799a0
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