Letter to the Editor

Discovery of a new quadruply lensed QSO: HS 0810+2554 – A brighter twin to PG 1115+080^*

¹ Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
² Departemento Astronomia, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 36-D, Santiago, Chile
³ Department of Physics and Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego, C-0424, La Jolla, CA 92093-0424

Corresponding author: D. Reimers, dreimers@hs.uni-hamburg.de

Received: 3 December 2001
Accepted: 16 December 2001

Abstract

We announce the probable discovery of a new very bright gravitationally lensed QSO, HS 0810+2554 (, ). The gravitational lens character has been discovered serendipitously by means of short (12 times 1 s) HST/STIS target acquisition images. The coadded images show a close bright double A () and B (16.7) separated by 025 plus two fainter images C (17.4) and D (18.8). There is also evidence for a lens galaxy in the center of the images which is fainter than A by a factor of ≤30 at 7150 Å. The image configuration resembles very much that of PG 1115+080 except that in HS 0810+2554 image splittings (≤ ) are smaller by a factor of ~2.5 and HS 0810+2554 is brighter by ~1m.