Discovery of a Very Bright and Intrinsically Very Luminous, Strongly Lensed Lyα Emitting Galaxy at z = 2.82 in the BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey

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We report the discovery of a very bright (r = 20.16), highly magnified, and yet intrinsically very luminous Lyα emitter (LAE) at z = 2.82. This system comprises four images in the observer plane with a maximum separation of 6" and it is lensed by a z = 0.55 massive early-type galaxy. It was initially identified in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Emission-Line Lens Survey for GALaxy-Lyα EmitteR sYstems (BELLS GALLERY) survey, and follow-up imaging and spectroscopic observations using the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and William Herschel Telescope (WHT) confirmed the lensing nature of this system. A lens model using a singular isothermal ellipsoid in an external shear field reproduces quite well the main features of the system, yielding an Einstein radius of 2.95" +/- 0.10", and a total magnification factor for the LAE of 8.8 +/- 0.4. This LAE is one of the brightest and most luminous galaxy-galaxy strong lenses known. We present initial imaging and spectroscopy showing the basic physical and morphological properties of this lensed system.