Lensing
My research uses custom software for the detection and modelling of Strong Gravitataion Lenses, including published papers completed on the SLOAN Lens ACS (SLACS), the Boss Emission-Line Lensing Survey (BELLS), and the Spectroscopic Identification of Lensing Objects (SILO), and ongoing projects to improve and automate the code.
ACSLens – written by Joel Brownstein in Python

The ACSLens software product includes a database containing the (input) galaxy targetting information, and the best-fit (output) lens model parameters. A GUI provides multiple windows to navigate the galaxy targets and visualize / re-optimize the lens models. Options for the (foreground) lens model includes the Singular Isothermal Ellipsoid (SIE), as shown below, and other mass distributions such as the Singular Power-Law Ellipsoid (SPLE) model. Options for the (background) source includes multiple de Vaucoulers or a pixelized source.


uuEmline – written by Joel Brownstein in IDL

The uuEmline software product provides a GUI interface to a database containing the results of a data analysis pipeline which detects candidate gravitational lines by searching for background emission-lines in millions of galaxy spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Candidates can be inspected and graded, and images from Hubble Space Telescope can be reduced in order to search for lensing features such as rings, arcs, or multiple images of the background galaxy.