STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 1

STARS MAGNIFY OTHERS

PROFESSOR EINSTEIN'S THEORY 1 | Professor Albert Einstein recently gave the world another mathematical discovery, a celestial wonder new to astronomy, showing that the space near a star is a magnifying glass. It means that one star can, with improved astronomical instruments, be a magnifying glass, or telescope, for better seeing of another more distant star. The reason, he explains, is the bending of light rays when they pass near the sun or any other massive star. _ | The rays, he finds, collect in this space as they would in a lons. Then at certain distant points the rays so collected aro focussed,-like the focus of a spy glass, opera glass, or telecope. ■ Human eyes, at the right point in space, would see this star-focussed image. There are stars suitably lined up, one far behind the other, to be seen in this manner from earth. But Professor Einstein points out that present optical equipment and present resolving power of telescopes is not sufficient to make these space images visible. | Star magnifying glasses go back to the eclipse of the sun in 1919 which was the first verification of Professor Einstein’s general theory’ of relativity, i Stars whose light passed close to the sun during eclipse, were photographed. Six mouths later, when again in the same position, but with the sun no longer near them, they were rephotographed on the same plates. The star rays did not fall on the same places in the photographic plates, showing that the rays had been deflected toward the sun, when they passed close to it during the eclipse. This verified Professor Einstein’s prediction. Applying this bending of light, _ Professor Einstein says if one star is directly behind another the magnification will

show the distant star as a halo of light around the nearby one. The halo focuses, however, at a point a vast distance beyond the lens star. Closer to the nearby star and just off the line that focuses the halo Professor Einstein further states, is another point where two stars would appear to the eye. , , . , r The second kind of magnification, when two stars are seen, he says, will give .a brighter image of the more distant star.