The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. CFHTLenS uses all five years of data imaged by the CFHT Legacy Survey which completed observations in early 2009.
The CFHT Lensing Survey
Welcome to the Astronomer section of the website for the Canada-France Hawaii Lensing Survey: CFHTLenS.
CFHTLenS is a 155 square degree multi-colour optical survey in ugriz incorporating all five years worth of data from the Wide, Deep and Pre-survey components on the CFHT Legacy Survey. The CFHTLS was optimised for weak lensing analysis with the deep i-band data taken in optimal sub-arcsecond seeing conditions.
The survey has
- High resolution imaging with 17 resolved galaxies per sq arcmin
- Deep multi-colour data with a median redshift of 0.75
- Accurate photometry resulting in a photometric redshift scatter of 0.04(1+z) and 4% catastrophic outlier rate
- Accurate shear measurement with calibration at the sub-percent level
The CFHTLenS team have developed four new data analysis methods to enable a robust and accurate weak lensing analysis of the data:
- Lensing quality data reduction with THELI detailed in Erben et al 2009
- Bayesian model-fitting for shear measurement with Lensfit outlined in Miller et al 2007
- Gaussianised Photometry for accurate photometric redshifts, detailed in Hildebrandt et al 2012
- Robust field selection based on systematic error analyses, to be detailed in Heymans et al 2012
Access to the available CFHTLenS data products is here
For more information about the Dark Universe and Gravitational Lensing please visit the public side of the website.