Discovery of the first quadruple gravitationally lensed quasar candidate with Pan-STARRS

Understand

We report the serendipitous discovery of the first gravitationally lensed quasar candidate from Pan-STARRS.

• The grizy images reveal four point-like images with magnitudes between 14.9 mag and 18.1 mag.
• The colors of the point sources are similar, and they are more consistent with quasars than with stars or galaxies.
• The lensing galaxy is detected in the izy bands, with an inferred photometric redshift of ~0.6, lower than that of the point sources.