From: "Walton, Rebecca" Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 11:19:20 -0000 To: Subject: Your Nature paper - press release details Dear Author, We are pleased to inform you that your paper entitled `A distortion of very-high-redshift galaxy number counts by gravitational lensing' has been featured in this week's press release for Nature. A copy of the press release entry about your paper, which has already been distributed to the media, is included below for your interest and to assist you if you receive any enquiries from journalists. You may redistribute this press release to your co-authors and press officers of your and your co-authors' institutions and funders, but you must ensure that they are aware that the content of the press release and paper is embargoed until 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time on 12 January, and that distribution beyond these recipients must wait until after that time. 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For further general information on issues relating to publicity, please refer to the details in our earlier correspondence notifying you of your publication date, or contact one of the Nature offices listed below. From North America Neda Afsarmanesh, Nature New York Tel: +1 212 726 9231; Fax: +1 646 563 7117 E-mail: n.afsarmanesh@us.nature.com From Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: m.nakano@natureasia.com From UK, Europe, other countries not listed Rebecca Walton, Nature London Tel: +44 207 843 4502; E-mail: r.walton@nature.com Best wishes, Rebecca Walton Press Officer, Nature Featured press release entry: Astronomy: Early galaxy numbers affected by gravitational lensing (pp 181-184) Attempts to understand the earliest galaxies will have to account for a significant observational bias, according to a paper in this week's Nature. Stuart Wyithe and colleagues report that gravitational lensing by intervening galaxies is likely to dominate the observed properties of galaxies with redshifts greater than ~12, leading to a distorted view of their luminosities and star-forming activity. The observed numbers of high-redshift galaxies and their luminosities have been used to build a statistical picture of star-forming activity in the early Universe. The light from these distant galaxies can be magnified by foreground galaxies - a `gravitational lensing' effect that can distort measurements of the distant galaxies. Although the likelihood of this happening has been estimated at only ~0.5%, observational biases can increase the size of the effect. In particular, at very high redshifts, where most of the galaxies are too faint to be seen, an effect called `magnification bias' can increase the fraction of gravitationally lensed galaxies in a galaxy sample. Wyithe and colleagues assess the magnitude of this magnification bias, and conclude that, at redshifts #12, the galaxy number counts could be modified by as much as a factor of ten, with most of the observed galaxies being lensed. The authors conclude that the results of future galaxy surveys will need to be corrected for this bias, if accurate conclusions are to be drawn regarding star formation in the earliest galaxies. CONTACT Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia) Tel: +61 3 8344 5083; E-mail: swyithe@unimelb.edu.au ______________________________________________________________________________ Any feedback or suggestions about this service can be sent by email to press@nature.com Nature, the world's leading scientific journal, www.nature.com/nature ******************************************************************************** DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. 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