Slashdot Mirror
Largest Lens Ever Discovered
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.
"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. "
Two words: Accretion disc.
Black holes themselves may be, well, *black*, but all the stuff swirling into them and/or being ejected from the poles glows nicely. And if that's the sort of thing making the quasar so bright, the images should be spectacular indeed. (note: it'll be a false-color image)
Why is the parent marked as Offtopic? That was legit question that relates to the topic at hand. Doesn't it?
Lunar landing conspiracy nonsense aside, I should think the answer is no.
You usually have the lens between you (the observer) and the thing being observed. That is, you have to be looking at light (or whatever part of the EM spectrum they're observing) that has come from the target, gone through the lens, and is heading towards Terra.
In short, since there isn't one of these incredibly large gas clouds between Terra and Luna, no, I really don't think we can use it to look at the moon.
> Part of the problem with the idea that the red shift is a doppler effect is that the observed quasars are apparently all in a relatively spherical arrangement about the Earth, thus implying that the Earth must be the center of the observed universe.
The earth is at the center of the observable universe, pretty much by definition.
Unless of course the observer in question isn't on the earth.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't think "patriot" means what you think it means.
It isn't necessarily a good thing.
It's a super massive blackhole in the center of the galaxy that's consuming massive amounts of gas in it's accretion disk. The gas is accelerated to near the speed of light as it falls into the black hole, and at the same time it compressed together heating it to fantastic temperatures over a huge area. Once more this process also causes a intense jet of radiation to be shot out from the spinning poles of the black hole.
Quasar refers to a Quasi-stellar Radio Scource.
Erm, angular seperation is useless unless you know it based on the place that you're looking from, really. What good does it do to know how far apart two stars appear to be looking from the center of the universe?
So according to Rayleigh's formula, that kind of resolution would mean that the lens diameter would be about 13 km (for visible light having a wavelength of 500 nm). Of course, with a lens that big one would have serious aberration problems. (First-year-physics-student syndrome made me do it.)