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The early Universe at redshift z\sim6-11 marks the reionization of the intergalactic medium, following the formation of the first generation of stars. However, those young galaxies at a cosmic age of \lesssim 500 million years (Myr, at z \gtrsim 10) remain largely unexplored as they are at or beyond the sensitivity limits of current large telescopes. Gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters enables the detection of high-redshift galaxies that are fainter than what otherwise could be found in the deepest images of the sky. We report the discovery of an object found in the multi-band observations of the cluster MACS1149+22 that has a high probability of being a gravitationally magnified object from the early universe. The object is firmly detected (12 sigma) in the two reddest bands of HST/WFC3, and not detected below 1.2 {\mu}m, matching the characteristics of z\sim9 objects. We derive a robust photometric redshift of z = 9.6 \pm 0.2, corresponding to a cosmic age of 490 \pm 15Myr (i.e., 3.6% of the age of the Universe). The large number of bands used to derive the redshift estimate make it one of the most accurate estimates ever obtained for such a distant object. The significant magnification by cluster lensing (a factor of \sim15) allows us to analyze the object's ultra-violet and optical luminosity in its rest-frame, thus enabling us to constrain on its stellar mass, star-formation rate and age. If the galaxy is indeed at such a large redshift, then its age is less than 200 Myr (at the 95% confidence level), implying a formation redshift of zf \lesssim 14. The object is the first z>9 candidate that is bright enough for detailed spectroscopic studies with JWST, demonstrating the unique potential of galaxy cluster fields for finding highly magnified, intrinsically faint galaxies at the highest redshifts., Comment: Submitted to the Nature Journal. 39 Pages, 13 figures

The Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) is a 524-orbit multi-cycle treasury program to use the gravitational lensing properties of 25 galaxy clusters to accurately constrain their mass distributions. The survey, described in detail in this paper, will definitively establish the degree of concentration of dark matter in the cluster cores, a key prediction of CDM. The CLASH cluster sample is larger and less biased than current samples of space-based imaging studies of clusters to similar depth, as we have minimized lensing-based selection that favors systems with overly dense cores. Specifically, twenty CLASH clusters are solely X-ray selected. The X-ray selected clusters are massive (kT > 5 keV; 5 - 30 x 10^14 M_solar) and, in most cases, dynamically relaxed. Five additional clusters are included for their lensing strength (Einstein radii > 35 arcsec at z_source = 2) to further quantify the lensing bias on concentration, to yield high resolution dark matter maps, and to optimize the likelihood of finding highly magnified high-redshift (z > 7) galaxies. The high magnification, in some cases, provides angular resolutions unobtainable with any current UVOIR facility and can yield z > 7 candidates bright enough for spectroscopic follow-up. A total of 16 broadband filters, spanning the near-UV to near-IR, are employed for each 20-orbit campaign on each cluster. These data are used to measure precise (sigma_phz < 0.02(1+z)) photometric redshifts for dozens of newly discovered multiply-lensed images per cluster. Observations of each cluster are spread over 8 epochs to enable a search, primarily in the parallel fields, for Type Ia supernovae at z > 1 to improve constraints on the time dependence of the dark energy equation of state and the evolution of such supernovae in an epoch when the universe is matter dominated., Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplements, 22 pages, 16 figures. Updated Tables 3,4,8 and figures 6 and 8 to reflect replacement of Abell 963 with Abell 1423 in CLASH survey. A963 cannot be observed with WFC3 due to the lack of usable guide stars

arXiv:1503.01482v2.-- et al., We perform a three-dimensional multi-probe analysis of the rich galaxy cluster A1689, one of the most powerful known lenses on the sky, by combining improved weak-lensing data from new wide-field ${{BVR}}_{{\rm C}}i\prime z\prime $ Subaru/Suprime-Cam observations with strong-lensing, X-ray, and Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect (SZE) data sets. We reconstruct the projected matter distribution from a joint weak-lensing analysis of two-dimensional shear and azimuthally integrated magnification constraints, the combination of which allows us to break the mass-sheet degeneracy. The resulting mass distribution reveals elongation with an axis ratio of ~0.7 in projection, aligned well with the distributions of cluster galaxies and intracluster gas. When assuming a spherical halo, our full weak-lensing analysis yields a projected halo concentration of ${c}_{200{\rm c}}^{2{\rm D}}=8.9\pm 1.1$ (${c}_{\mathrm{vir}}^{2{\rm D}}\sim 11$), consistent with and improved from earlier weak-lensing work. We find excellent consistency between independent weak and strong lensing in the region of overlap. In a parametric triaxial framework, we constrain the intrinsic structure and geometry of the matter and gas distributions, by combining weak/strong lensing and X-ray/SZE data with minimal geometric assumptions. We show that the data favor a triaxial geometry with minor–major axis ratio 0.39±0.15 and major axis closely aligned with the line of sight (22°±10°). We obtain a halo mass ${M}_{200{\rm c}}=(1.2\pm 0.2)\times {10}^{15}\;{M}_{\odot }\;{h}^{-1}$ and a halo concentration ${c}_{200{\rm c}}=8.4\pm 1.3$, which overlaps with the $\gtrsim 1\sigma $ tail of the predicted distribution. The shape of the gas is rounder than the underlying matter but quite elongated with minor–major axis ratio 0.60 ± 0.14. The gas mass fraction within 0.9 Mpc is ${10}_{-2}^{+3}\%$, a typical value for high-mass clusters. The thermal gas pressure contributes to ~60% of the equilibrium pressure, indicating a significant level of non-thermal pressure support. When compared to Planck's hydrostatic mass estimate, our lensing measurements yield a spherical mass ratio of MPlanck/MGL = 0.70 ± 0.15 and 0.58 ± 0.10 with and without corrections for lensing projection effects, respectively., The work is partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under the grant MOST 103-2112-M-001-030-MY3. M. S. acknowledges financial contributions from contracts ASI/INAF I/023/12/0, by the PRIN MIUR 2010–2011 “The dark universe and the cosmic evolution of baryons: from current surveys to Euclid” and by the PRIN INAF 2012 “The universe in the box: multiscale simulations of cosmic structure.” M. N. acknowledges financial support from PRIN INAF 2014. J. M. D. acknowledges support of the consolider project CSD2010-00064 and AYA2012-39475-C02-01 funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad. N. O. is supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (26800097). This work was partially supported by “World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative)” and the Funds for the Development of Human Resources in Science and Technology under MEXT, Japan.