Nov 29 2010
Lensing Answer
Received an email back from Doug Finkbeiner with a reference and a calculation. I did have to look up the definition of a parsec and multiply by 180/pi to get his parsecs per degree factor and understand better. In any case, lensing does not need to be considered with the gamma ray bubbles of the Milky Way.
The answer was detailed, informative, and polite. Could be enough encouragement for me to continue contacting scientists again. Emails sent out Friday and Saturday were the first in over two years; for a long time I was too discouraged to even click a send button.
If you can think of a way to explain why lensing does not need to be considered in a very simple way, I would be interested to know. I imagine that I would mostly just be confused but impressed by the unsimplified answer though.
Credit goes to Doug Finkbeiner here. If I had researched it on my own better I maybe would have realized that lensing angles are typically much smaller than a degree and it takes objects much farther away than in our own galaxy, and very massive such as a cluster of galaxies, to matter.
Here is a link I was given: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
To publish the entire email I would need permission, and that is probably not necessary.