Astrophysical Applications of Gravitational Lensing

This is a review of one of the most rapidly growing fields of astronomy: gravitational lensing. The book covers not only the specific problems related to finding and understanding lensing and lensing phenomena, but also the applications of gravitational lenses in diverse areas of astronomy and astrophysics. These applications range from the structure of the Milky Way galaxy and its stellar luminosity function, to the structure of elliptical galaxies, clusters and the size, structure and age of the universe. Contributions include reviews of MACHO searches, lensed radio sources and quasars, microlensing in distant galaxies, constraints on the mass distribution in galaxies, limits on cosmological models, measurements of the Hubble constant, and weak lensing and the masses of clusters.