Nature: White Dwarf acts as cosmic magnifying glass
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 8:44 pm
There is a nice video in the webpage modelling how the lensing looks.White dwarf acts as cosmic magnifying glass
Planet-hunting telescope sees long-predicted gravitational lensing of star in binary system by its companion.
Elizabeth Gibney
17 April 2014 Clarified: 22 April 2014
Astronomers have observed a white dwarf acting as a magnifying glass for another, Sun-like star that it is orbiting. The binary star system, 808 parsecs (2,600 light years) away from Earth in the constellation Lyra, was previously classified as a possible exoplanet system.
Using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, physicists Ethan Kruse and Eric Agol of the University of Washington in Seattle observed an increase of just 0.1% in the larger star's brightness every 88 days, lasting for 5 hours. They say that the effect is the result of an orbiting white dwarf — a dense, compact, burnt-out star whose gravitational effects act as a magnifying glass every time it crosses the line of sight between its companion star and Earth. Kruse and Agol publish their findings in Science1 today.
http://www.nature.com/news/white-dwarf- ... S-20140422
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