The Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields and Legacy Observations (BUFFALO) is a 101 orbit + 101 parallel Cycle 25 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury program taking data from 2018 to 2020. BUFFALO will expand existing coverage of the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) in Wide Field Camera 3/IR F105W, F125W, and F160W and Advanced Camera for Surveys/WFC F606W and F814W around each of the six HFF clusters and flanking fields. This additional area has not been observed by HST but is already covered by deep multiwavelength data sets, including Spitzer and Chandra. As with the original HFF program, BUFFALO is designed to take advantage of gravitational lensing from massive clusters to simultaneously find high-redshift galaxies that would otherwise lie below HST detection limits and model foreground clusters to study the properties of dark matter and galaxy assembly. The expanded area will provide the first opportunity to study both cosmic variance at high redshift and galaxy assembly in the outskirts of the large HFF clusters. Five additional orbits are reserved for transient followup. BUFFALO data including mosaics, value-added catalogs, and cluster mass distribution models will be released via MAST on a regular basis as the observations and analysis are completed for the six individual clusters.

Context. General relativistic effects on the clustering of matter in the Universe provide a sensitive probe of cosmology and gravity theories that can be tested with the upcoming generation of galaxy surveys. These will require the availability of accurate model predictions, from large linear scales to small non-linear ones. Aims. Here, we present a suite of large-volume high-resolution N-body simulations specifically designed to generate light-cone data for the study of relativistic effects on lensing-matter observables without the use of simplifying approximations. As a case study application of these data, we perform an analysis of the relativistic contributions to the lensing-matter power spectra and cross-power spectra. Methods. The RayGalGroupSims suite (RAYGAL for short) consists of two N-body simulations of (2625 h−1 Mpc)3 volume with 40963 particles of a standard flat ΛCDM model and a non-standard wCDM phantom dark energy model with a constant equation of state. Light-cone data from the simulations have been generated using a parallel ray-tracing algorithm that has integrated more than 1 billion geodesic equations without the use of the flat-sky or Born approximation. Results. Catalogues and maps with relativistic weak lensing that include post-Born effects, magnification bias (MB), and redshift-space distortions (RSDs) due to gravitational redshift, Doppler, transverse Doppler, and integrated Sachs-Wolfe–Rees-Sciama effects are publicly released. Using this dataset, we are able to reproduce the linear and quasi-linear predictions from the CLASS relativistic code for the ten power spectra and cross-spectra (3 × 2 points) of the matter-density fluctuation field and the gravitational convergence at z = 0.7 and z = 1.8. We find a 1–30% level contribution from both MB and RSDs to the matter power spectrum, while the fingers-of-God effect is visible at lower redshift in the non-linear regime. Magnification bias also contributes at the 10−30% level to the convergence power spectrum, leading to a deviation between the shear power spectrum and the convergence power spectrum. Magnification bias also plays a significant role in the galaxy-galaxy lensing by decreasing the density-convergence spectra by 20% and coupling non-trivial configurations (such as the configuration with the convergence at the same redshift as the density, or at even lower redshifts). Conclusions. The cosmological analysis shows that the relativistic 3 × 2 points approach is a powerful cosmological probe. Our unified approach to relativistic effects is an ideal framework for the investigation of gravitational effects in galaxy studies (e.g., clustering and weak lensing) as well as their effects in galaxy cluster, group, and void studies (e.g., gravitational redshifts and weak lensing) and cosmic microwave background studies (e.g., integrated Sachs-Wolfe–Rees-Sciama and weak lensing).

We present the strong lensing analysis of two galaxy clusters: MACS J0242.5-2132 (MACS J0242, z = 0.313) and MACS J0949.8+1708 (MACS J0949, z = 0.383). Their total matter distributions are constrained thanks to the powerful combination of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the MUSE instrument. Using these observations, we precisely measure the redshift of six multiple image systems in MACS J0242, and two in MACS J0949. We also include four multiple image systems in the latter cluster identified in HST imaging without MUSE redshift measurements. For each cluster, our best-fit mass model consists of a single cluster-scale halo, and 57 (170) galaxy-scale halos for MACS J0242 (MACS J0949). Multiple images positions are predicted with a rms 0.39″and 0.15″for MACS J0242 and MACS J0949 models respectively. From these mass models, we derive aperture masses of M(R <200 kpc$) = 1.67_{-0.05}^{+0.03}\times 10^{14}M_{\odot }$, and M(R <200 kpc$) = 2.00_{-0.20}^{+0.05}\times 10^{14}M_{\odot }$. Combining our analysis with X-ray observations from the XMM-Newton Observatory, we show that MACS J0242 appears to be a relatively relaxed cluster, while conversely, MACS J0949 shows a relaxing post-merger state. At 200 kpc, X-ray observations suggest the hot gas fraction to be respectively $f_g = 0.115^{+0.003}_{-0.004}$ and $0.053^{+0.007}_{-0.006}$ for MACS J0242 and MACS J0949. MACS J0242 being relaxed, its density profile is very well fitted by a NFW distribution, in agreement with X-ray observations. Finally, the strong lensing analysis of MACS J0949 suggests a flat dark matter density distribution in the core, between 10 and 100 kpc. This appears consistent with X-ray observations.