A Radio Interferometric Test of the General Relativistic Light Bending Near the Sun

摘要

Radio interferometry was used to measure the deflection of a radio source as it passed the Sun. This deflection is a separable combination of refraction in the coronal electron plasma and the General Relativistic effect. The observed inverse distance component was 1.04(+0.15/-0.10) of that predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The observation also yielded a reasonable value for the coronal electron density. (Author)