I am new to such forums but am hopeful that someone might enlighten me on the question of gravitational lensing.

Being familiar with various glass lenses I can readily see the similarity when the light from a single object, slightly offset from direct line of sight - earth - gravitational lense - single object - becomes 'smeared' into an arcuate blob.

But what sort of single lense creates multiple clear images of a single object? Certainly not one that obeys the rules of optics.

However, 'flemish glass' achieves this being composed of multiple non planar distorted lenses.

Is this what is implied when images of multiple quasars are interpreted as being formed by 'gravitational lensing'?

Help please

Hi rhodesign,

Hum,
I’m not an expert on Flemish glass but I think that it uses the same principle of distortion.
However, the galaxy acts like `one` normal round blob of Glass, rather than the multitude of concave pools in Flemish glass…