Gravitational lensing as folds in the sky

Abstract

We revisit the gravitational lensing phenomenon using a new visualization technique. It consists in projecting the observers sky into the source plane, what gives rise to a folded and stretched surface. This provides a clear graphical tool to visualize some interesting well-known effects, such as the development of multiple images of a source, the structure of the caustic curves, the parity of the images and their magnification as a function of the source position.