Gravitational lensing Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-13
Gravitational lensing is the deflection and focusing of light by spacetime curvature along the line of sight.
A useful first model is a point-mass gravitational lens: one displaced source gives two images of a point-mass lens, while exact alignment gives an Einstein ring. The Einstein angular radius sets the angular scale, and image parity in gravitational lensing explains why the two images have different handedness. The spectroscopic test of the Twin Quasar lens shows how optical spectra can test whether two apparent quasars represent one source.