Related papers: Observations from Australasia using the Gravitatio…
The Faraday rotation measurements of multiply-imaged gravitational lens systems can be effectively used to probe the existence of large-scale ordered magnetic fields in lensing galaxies and galaxy clusters. The available sample of lens…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…
The light we observe from distant astrophysical objects including supernovae and quasars allows us to determine large distances in terms of a cosmological model. Despite the success of the standard cosmological model in fitting the data,…
It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
The gravitational lensing effect is one of the most promising tools for cosmology. Indeed it probes directly the total mass distribution in large-scale structures and can as well provide valuable informations on the values of the density…
Various methods have been proposed to search for extrasolar planets. Compared to the other methods, microlensing has unique applicabilities to the detections of Earth-mass and free-floating planets. However, the microlensing method is…
I shall outline the basic principles and some observational aspects of weak gravitational lensing, and discuss several applications of this powerful tool in observational cosmology. It will be explained why the applications have been…
Gravitational microlensing provides a unique window on the properties and prevalence of extrasolar planetary systems because of its ability to find low-mass planets at separations of a few AU. The early evidence from microlensing indicates…
The advent of new observational facilities in the last two decades has allowed the rapid discovery and high-resolution optical imaging of many strong lens systems from galaxy to cluster scales, as well as their spectroscopic follow-up.…
This course presents some applications of gravitational lensing to the measurement of masses of galaxies (galaxy-galaxy lensing, Eintein rings, perturbations of giant arcs) and cluster of galaxies (strong and weak lensing). This complements…
Gravitational lensing describes the bending of the trajectories of light and gravitational waves due to the gravitational potential of a massive object. Strong lensing by galaxies can create multiple images with different overall…
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
To evaluate a potential usually one analyzes trajectories of test particles. For the Galactic Center case astronomers use bright stars or photons, so there are two basic observational techniques to investigate a gravitational potential,…
We present calculations illustrating the potential of gravitational microlensing to discriminate between classical models of stellar surface brightness profiles and the recently computed ``Next Generation'' models of Hauschildt et al. These…
The potential of gravitational lenses for providing direct, physical measurements of the Hubble constant, free from systematic errors associated with the traditional distance ladder, has long been recognized. However, it is only recently…
Since the first microlensing planet discovery in 2003, more than 200 planets have been detected with gravitational microlensing, in addition to several free-floating planet and black hole candidates. In this chapter the microlensing theory…
We argue that gravitational microlensing is a feasible technique for measuring the mass function of brown dwarf stars in distant galaxies. Microlensing surveys of the bulge of M31, and of M87 in the Virgo cluster, may provide enough events…
Most surveys for multiply-imaged gravitational lenses, outside of rich galaxy clusters, are based on sifting through large samples of distant sources to identify the rare examples of lensing. An alternative strategy, based on the selection…
We investigate the chance of detecting proto-planetary or debris disks in stars that induce microlensing events (lenses). The modification of the light curves shapes due to occultation and extinction by the disks as well as the additional…
Thirteen exo-planets have been discovered using the gravitational microlensing technique (out of which 7 have been published). These planets already demonstrate that super-Earths (with mass up to ~10 Earth masses) beyond the snow line are…