AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 45. Instrumentation for Space Observations
Display, Tuesday, January 8, 2002, 9:20am-6:30pm, Monroe/Lincoln

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[45.02] Weak lensing with GEST

J.D. Rhodes (NRC/GSFC), D.P. Bennett (Notre Dame), N. Kaiser (University of Hawaii)

Weak lensing by large-scale structure (cosmic shear) provides an opportunity to directly observe the dark matter in the universe. Current ground-based and space-based surveys have demonstrated the efficacy of this technique in determining the mass distribution and thus placing constraints on cosmological parameters such as \Omegam, \sigma8, and the bias parameter b. Current surveys have been hampered by the comparatively low resolution of ground-based telescopes and the small field of view of HST. To make significant progress in this field, wide field space-based surveys are needed. The Galactic Exoplanet Survey Telescope (GEST) will be able to provide 500- 1000 sqare degrees with a resolution of better than 0.2 arcseconds in multiple filters. This will make it an ideal instrument for a weak lensing survey.


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