Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Apr 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994a%26a...284..689l&link_type=abstract
Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 284, no. 2, p. 689-692
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
9
Dark Matter, Diffraction Patterns, Gravitational Lenses, Speckle Patterns, Telescopes, Extrasolar Planets, Gravitation, Solar Neighborhood
Scientific paper
Plane electromagnetic waves which propagate past a compact mass, assumed opaque and spherical, become distorted, according to General Relativity, and generate a far-field diffraction pattern resembling the classical Airy disk. It can be intercepted by a telescope, causing brief `diffractive events' which may provide information on the lensing mass and the background source producing the wave. A convolved image of the source is indeed projected onto the telescope aperture. Such events can be expected to occur at intervals of weeks in the average, for a planet-sized mass located at less than a parsec from the observer, if there is a nearby galaxy in the background field. The expected photon count is modest but adequate when using large diffraction-limited telescopes. The diffraction peak becomes degraded into fainter speckles if the lense's oblateness is much higher than the Earth's. Such observations should provide resolved images of stars and multiple stars in galaxies with extreme resolution.
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