Generalised model-independent characterisation of strong gravitational lenses VIII. automated multi-band feature detection to constrain local lens properties

Understand

As established in previous papers of this series, observables in highly distorted and magnified multiple images caused by the strong gravitational lensing effect can be used to constrain the distorting properties of the gravitational lens at the image positions.

• If the background source is extended and contains substructure, like star forming regions, which is resolved in multiple images, all substructure that can be matched across a minimum of three multiple images can be used to infer the local distorting properties of the lens.
• In this work, we replace the manual feature selection by an automated feature extraction based on SExtractor for Python and show its superior performance.
• Despite its aimed development to improve our lens reconstruction, it can be employed in any other approach, as well.