On 2022 July 8, NASA shared (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-shares-list-of-cosmic-targets-for-webb-telescope-s-first-images) the list of five public showcase targets that have been observed with the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and whose data—at the time of writing—are expected to be released to the public around Tuesday, July 12. One of these targets is the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3−7327 (z = 0.39), which acts as a gravitational lens and was recently imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). To facilitate studies by the community with the upcoming JWST data, we publish here a strong-lensing model for SMACS J0723.3−7327—including mass density and magnification maps. We identify five multiple-image families in the HST imaging. For three of them, system membership and redshift are secured by public spectroscopic data. For the remaining two systems, we rely on robust photometric redshift estimates. We use the Light-Traces-Mass lens modeling method, which complements the parametric models already available in the RELICS repository and elsewhere and thus helps span a representative range of solutions. The new model published here can be accessed on the RELICS website at MAST. It will be interesting to examine which properties of the mass models change and improve, and by how much, when the JWST data are incorporated.

We report the discovery of a transient seen in a strongly lensed arc at redshift zs = 1.2567 in Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the Abell 370 galaxy cluster. The transient is detected at 29.51 ± 0.14 AB mag in a WFC3/UVIS F200LP difference image made using observations from two different epochs, obtained in the framework of the Flashlights program, and is also visible in the F350LP band (mF350LP ≈ 30.53 ± 0.76 AB mag). The transient is observed on the negative-parity side of the critical curve at a distance of ∼0$farcs$6 from it, greater than previous examples of lensed stars. The large distance from the critical curve yields a significantly smaller macromagnification, but our simulations show that bright, O/B-type supergiants can reach sufficiently high magnifications to be seen at the observed position and magnitude. In addition, the observed transient image is a trailing image with an observer-frame time delay of ∼+0.8 days from its expected counterpart, so that any transient lasting for longer than that should have also been seen on the minima side and is thus excluded. This, together with the blue colour we measure for the transient (mF200LP − mF350LP ≈ [ − 0.3, −1.6] AB), rules out most other transient candidates such as (kilo)novae, for example, and makes a lensed star the prime candidate. Assuming the transient is indeed a lensed star as suggested, many more such events should be detected in the near future in cluster surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.

The Reionization Cluster Survey (RELICS) imaged 41 galaxy clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in order to detect lensed and high-redshift galaxies. Each cluster was imaged to about 26.5 AB mag in three optical and four near-infrared bands, taken in two distinct visits separated by varying time intervals. We make use of the multiple near-infrared epochs to search for transient sources in the cluster fields, with the primary motivation of building statistics for bright caustic crossing events in gravitational arcs. Over the whole sample, we do not find any significant (≳ 5σ) caustic crossing events, in line with expectations from semi-analytic calculations but in contrast to what may be naively expected from previous detections of some bright events, or from deeper transient surveys that do find high rates of such events. Nevertheless, we find six prominent supernova (SN) candidates over the 41 fields: three of them were previously reported and three are new ones reported here for the first time. Out of the six candidates, four are likely core-collapse (CC) SNe – three in cluster galaxies, and among which only one was known before, and one slightly behind the cluster at z ∼ 0.6 − 0.7. The other two are likely Ia – both of them previously known, one probably in a cluster galaxy, and one behind it at z ≃ 2. Our study supplies empirical bounds for the rate of caustic crossing events in galaxy cluster fields to typical HST magnitudes, and lays the groundwork for a future SN rate study.