Wide field weak lensing observations of A1689

¹ Institut für Astrophysik und Extraterrestrische Forschung der Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
² Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl Schwarzschild Str. 1, 85741 Garching, Germany

Corresponding author: D. Clowe, clowe@astro.uni-bonn.de

Received: 11 June 2001
Accepted: 10 September 2001

Abstract

We present a mass profile for A1689 from from a weak lensing analysis of a R-band image from the ESO/MPG Wide Field Imager. We detect the gravitational shearing of a background galaxy population even at the edge of the image with a significance, and find a two-dimensional mass reconstruction has a significance mass peak centered on the brightest cluster galaxy. This peak is well fit by both a km s^-1 singular isothermal sphere and a "universal" CDM profile, although the "universal" CDM profile provides a better fit with 95.5% confidence. These mass measurements are lower than most of those derived by other means and we discuss possible reasons for weak lensing providing an underestimate of the true mass of the cluster. We find that the correction factors needed to reconcile the weak lensing mass models with the strong lensing Einstein radius would result is a much larger fraction of faint stars and foreground and cluster dwarf galaxies in the object catalog than is seen in other fields.