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turbo
Gold Member
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"lensed" quasar pair
Here is a paper about a purportedly lensed quasar.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0505248
Has anybody notice how "lensed" quasars, like those comprising the Einstein cross, seem to manage to retain their point-like appearance instead of exhibiting arc-like distortion around the center of mass of the "lensing" mass? Why is this? Can light from quasars blithely ignore the laws of classical optics? As a board-certified optician, I would find it difficult to build you any lens (short of combinations of basic prisms) that would give you multiple images of a point object and retain their point-like appearance with no smearing. How do these "lensing" clusters and galaxies manage to accomplish this preferentially along the line of sight to US?
Here is a paper about a purportedly lensed quasar.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0505248
Has anybody notice how "lensed" quasars, like those comprising the Einstein cross, seem to manage to retain their point-like appearance instead of exhibiting arc-like distortion around the center of mass of the "lensing" mass? Why is this? Can light from quasars blithely ignore the laws of classical optics? As a board-certified optician, I would find it difficult to build you any lens (short of combinations of basic prisms) that would give you multiple images of a point object and retain their point-like appearance with no smearing. How do these "lensing" clusters and galaxies manage to accomplish this preferentially along the line of sight to US?