Sep 22 – 25, 2019
Turin
Europe/Rome timezone

Gravitational lensing hundred years after the Eddington expedition

Speaker

Prof. Volker Perlick (ZARM, University of Bremen, Germany)

Description

Exactly hundred years ago, in May 1919, Arthur Eddington and three colleagues observed the gravitational light deflection, as predicted by Albert Einstein, during a total Sun eclipse. After a historical introduction, I'll discuss the relevance of gravitational lensing as an important tool for present-day astrophysics. In the last part of the talk I will investigate in some detail the pictures of the shadow of the black-hole candidate at the centre of M87, which were released to the public on 10 April 2019, just hundred years after the Eddington expedition.

Presentation materials