| Abstract: | How to exploit the Sun as a gravitational lens has been studied extensively during the last 20 years, especially by this author (Refs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). In essence, a spacecraft dubbed FOCAL (an acronym for “Fast Outgoing Cyclopean Astronomical Lens”) should be launched in the direction of the sky opposite to the area of the sky we wish to see highly magnified both at radio and other frequencies. After FOCAL reached the minimal focal distance of 550 AU from the Sun, highly magnified radio images of celestial objects located on the opposite side of the Sun will automatically be produced. In this paper we apply the FOCAL mission concept to the goal of exploring the neighborhood of the Alpha Centauri B star, where the nearest exoplanet to the Solar system was recently discovered. We suggest that: |
