Gravitational Lensing : a universal astrophysical tool
- In the roughly 20 years of its existence as an observational science, gravitational lensing has established itself as a valuable tool in many astrophysical fields. In the introduction of this review we briefly present the basics of lensing. Then it is shown that the two propagation effects, lensing and scintillation, have a number of properties in common. In the main part various lensing phenomena are discussed with emphasis on recent observations.
