Gravitational lenses: The current sample, recent results, and continuing searches

Gravitational lensing is one of the topics in astrophysics that was quite extensively discussed over time before it was actually discovered. Ten years after the discovery of the first one, it is interesting to note how the field has developed. After an initial slow rate of discovery, the last few years have seen an explosion in the number of reported cases. Attention was drawn to the first few cases because quasars at the same red shift, with similar optical spectra, were observed with angular separations of only a few arc seconds. Most observational effort has been devoted to searching for new candidate lens systems and carefully measuring their properties, both to test whether they are indeed lensed and to provide constraints for modeling. A classification of the lenses is into rings, arcs, multiples, and doubles, where the progression is from sources close to the optical axis to far from the optical axis. The known candidate systems are listed. The searches for gravitational lenses are proving to be successful, and more lenses continue to be discovered serendipitously. Many searches are under way, along with instruments that will routinely increase the resolution of astronomical imaging.