A Computer Program to Visualize Gravitational Lenses

Abstract

Gravitational lenses are presently playing an important role in astrophysics. By means of these lenses the parameters of the deflector such as its mass, ellipticity, etc. and Hubble's constant can be determined. Using C, Xforms, Mesa and Imlib a computer program to visualize this lens effect has been developed. This program has been applied to generate sequences of images of a source object and its corresponding images. It has also been used to visually test different models of gravitational lenses.

15 pages, 6 figures