ASTRONOMERS have caught the first close-up view of the surface of a star
other than the Sun. They studied the distant star, some 25,000 light years away,
with the help of a cosmic magnifying glass known as a gravitational lens.
Objects passing between us and distant stars bend light rays heading our way.
This can brighten the image of a distant star by focusing its light. Lensing
events are rare, and so easily missed. However, if the lens is a binary star, a
second lensing event may follow the first. Last June, the European Southern
Observatory in Germany got…
