HEAD 2000, November 2000
Session 3. Active Galaxies - High Resolution Imaging
Display, Monday, November 6, 2000, 8:00am-6:00pm, Bora Bora Ballroom

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[3.04] CHANDRA Resolves the Variable Gravitational Lens System RXJ0911.4\+0551; Constraining H0 within a Single X-ray Observation.

G. Chartas, G. Garmire (Penn State University), M. Bautz, P. Schechter, F. Baganoff, C. R. Canizares, G. Clark, J. Hewitt, M. Pivovaroff, G. Ricker, S. Jones (MIT), X. Dai (Penn State University)

The mini-BAL quasar RXJ0911.4+0551 was observed with the Chandra ACIS-S for about 30ks as part of a gravitational lens (GL) survey aimed at measuring time-delays. The Chandra image of the RXJ0911.4+0551 field shows the galaxy cluster lens approximately 40" SW of the lensed quasar. The cluster is quite faint with a 0.2-2 keV flux of 4.4 x 10-15 erg s-1 cm-2. We have incorporated the detected location of the galaxy cluster in constraining GL models for this system.

An interesting result of our timing analysis is the possible detection of a rapid flux variation in the light curve of image A2. We briefly discuss possible origins for the observed short-term X-ray variability. Our GL model for the RXJ0911.4+0551 GL system predicts a time-delay of less than a day between images A1 and A2. RXJ0911.4+0551 is an ideal system to apply the GL method for estimating the Hubble Constant. We describe the prospects of measuring H0 within a single X-ray observation.



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