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Largest Lens Ever Discovered

Posted by timothy on from the new-prescription dept.

K Tanmay writes "A team of Astronomers have found a natural lens capable of resolving details as fine as 10 microarcseconds across - equivalent to seeing a sugar cube on the Moon, from Earth. The lens comprises of a cloud of interstellar gas, and works on the principle of scintillation; where the clumpiness inside a cloud of gas creates a density change thus bending and focusing the light. This technique, dubbed 'Earth-Orbit Synthesis', will be first used to study black holes in distant quasars, so don't expect spectacular wallpaper replacing images. There's also an interview with Dr. Hayley Bignall, an astronomer from the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE), where she discusses the concept of using interstellar scintillation to get observations that we could never measure from here on earth." Update: 02/22 18:23 GMT by T : That wikipedia link had led to the wrong place; here's the definition for arcsecond if you still want to read it.

5 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually... by DigitaLunatiC · · Score: 5, Informative

    A starlike object that may send out radio waves and other forms of energy; large red shifts imply enormous recession velocities [dictionary.com]

    Hope that's satisfactory.

  2. Very Large Array by FTL · · Score: 5, Informative
    Check out the telescope array they used to find this lens. I don't know what's more impressive, the sheer size or the fact that each of the dishes are mobile and shift up and down the tracks so that the array can reconfigure itself for different types of observations.

    I remember seeing a photo of this array as a child. Back then it only had five dishes. I had no idea that it had been filled out. Why don't we hear about this sort of thing?

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  3. Re:IANAA by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Umm... yes. Supermassive blackholes are the leading candidates for the engines driving quasars. From Google:

    "Quasar - an enormously bright object at the edge of our Universe that emits massive amounts of energy. In an optical telescope, they appear point-like, similar to stars, from which they derive their name. Their high luminosity is created from matter falling into a supermassive black hole in the centers of distant galaxies."

  4. uhm... by Hegestratos · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's also an interview with Dr. Hayley Bignall, [...], where he discusses [...].

    He? I know astrophysicist is a male-dominated profession. But a name like 'Hayley' should at the very least make one wonder. See this page to accurately determine Dr. Bignall's gender.

    Furthermore, this is nothing really new; see this /. story, amongst others.

    Still, it's a very creative way of increasing resolution! Not to mention difficult and time-consuming. I wonder how believable the results are. I use a similar technique (called Speckle Masking) to eliminate earth-atmosphere scintillation from Solar observations, with astounding results. These, however, can be checked against single 'lucky shot' images of extrodinary quality or observations from space...

    Cheers,

    Alfred

  5. Re:Actually... by Scott+Ransom · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, that is not satisfactory... Your definition was valid in the 60's and 70's but not today.

    Now we know that they are distant galaxies that have active nuclei. The nuclei are powered by supermassive (10^6-10^8 solar masses) black holes. What we are seeing is the point-like emission from near these black holes (i.e. the jets and/or an accretion disk). The radiation is often visible in radio, optical, and X-ray bands.

    PS: IAAA (I am an astronomer)