1997/09/08 by Liliya L. R. Williams, Williams, Liliya L. R., Paul L. Schechter +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9709059
15 pages, LaTeX, figues included; To appear in October issue of Astronomy and Geophysics, the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
arxiv created 1997/09/08 · openalex publication_date 1997/09/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2022/10/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gravitational lensing is now widely and successfully used to study a range of\nastronomical phenomena, from individual objects, like galaxies and clusters, to\nthe mass distribution on various scales, to the overall geometry of the\nUniverse. Here we describe and assess the use of gravitational lensing as\n``gold standards'' in addressing one of the fundamental problems in astronomy,\nthe determination of the absolute distance scale to extragalactic objects. This\nis commonly parameterized by the Hubble constant, H0, the current expansion\nrate of the Universe. The elegance of the underlying geometrical principle of\nthe gravitational lensing method combined with the recent advances in\nobservations and modelling makes it a very promising technique for measuring\nH0.\n