AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 180 Supernovae and Cosmology
Poster, Thursday, 9:20am-4:00pm, January 12, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[180.03] Correcting for Gravitational Lensing of Supernovae

J. Jönsson, T. Dahlen, A. Goobar, C. Gunnarsson (Stockholm University, Fysikum), E. Mörtsell (Stockholm University, Stockholm Observatory), K. Lee (Johns Hopkins University)

Gravitational lensing of high redshift supernovae is potentially an important source of uncertainty when deriving cosmological parameters from the measured brightness of Type Ia supernovae. We investigate the possibility of correcting for the magnification of standard candle sources using the observed properties of foreground galaxies along the line-of-sight to each source. Simulations show that this method can reduce the dispersion due to lensing for a standard candle source at z=1.5 from about 7% to 3%. The method has also been applied to the GOODS sample of supernovae discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our results show that the lensing distortions of the supernova brightness can be well understood for the GOODS sample and that correcting for this effect has a negligible impact on the derived cosmological parameters.


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