Lensing in the Blue. III. Weak-lensing Shape Catalogs of 30 Merging Galaxy Clusters
Abstract We present the weak gravitational lensing dataset from the Super-pressure Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT), which imaged 30 galaxy clusters during its 45 night flight in 2023 April–May. SuperBIT is a first-of-its-kind balloon-borne imaging telescope that achieved near-diffraction-limited observations in near-space conditions above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere. We use the metacalibration algorithm to obtain calibrated galaxy shapes for our target clusters and several calibration fields, enabling unbiased reconstruction of the weak-lensing signal. We employ several diagnostics throughout the pipeline, including assessments of point-spread function (PSF) modeling residuals and their impact on weak-lensing measurements, as well as tests for correlations between galaxy shapes and measured galaxy and PSF properties. To assess the multiplicative shear bias of the pipeline, we analyze a parallel set of simulated images that incorporate the real observing conditions from the flight, including measured SuperBIT PSFs, observed sky backgrounds, and detector noise, yielding a bias of (1.54% ± 6.00%).
Authors
- Susan F. Redmond (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-4371)
- Mohamed M. Shaaban (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7600-3190)
- Jürgen Schmoll (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5612-7535)
- William C. Jones (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3636-1241)
- Bradley Holder
- Luis Javier Romualdez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-0983)
- Sut-Ieng Tam (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6724-833X)
- Andrew Robertson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0086-0524)
- Jason S.-Y. Leung (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7116-3710)
- Mathilde Jauzac (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1974-8732)
- Paul Clark (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0438-2133)
- Steven J. Benton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4214-9298)
- Matthew Craigie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3162-2107)
- Giulia Cerini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5273-4634)
- Ajay Gill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3937-4662)
- Maya Amit (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2898-7022)
- David J. Lagattuta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7633-2883)
- Christopher John Damaren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2036-2506)
- David Harvey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6066-6707)
- Anthony M. Brown (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0259-3148)
- T. F. Eifler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1894-3301)
- Jason D. Rhodes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4485-8549)
- A Z Vitorelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9740-4591)
- Johanna M. Nagy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2036-7008)
- A. Zenteno (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6455-9135)
- Ellen Sirks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7542-0355)
- Jacqueline McCleary (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9883-7460)
- Emaad Paracha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5101-7302)
- Georgios N. Vassilakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2684-2961)
- Gavin Leroy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2523-4425)
- Lun Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8896-911X)
- Eric Habjan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9547-0952)
- Thuy Vy T. Luu
- Spencer Everett (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3745-2882)
- Leo W H Fung (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5899-3936)
- Richard Massey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6085-3780)
- Eric M. Huff (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9378-3424)
- Philippe Voyer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5546-890X)
- Sayan Saha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6044-2164)
- John W. Hartley
- C. Barth Netterfield
Institutions
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute (US)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (CA)
- Northeastern University (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (TW)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Durham University (GB)
- Princeton University (US)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CL)
- NSF NOIRLab (US)
- National Research Council Canada (CA)
- Imperial College London (GB)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
- New York University (US)
- Case Western Reserve University (US)
- Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (ES)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Published
- 2026-10-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aea6a5
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.08