THE SOURCES OF THE A-DEGENERATE AND B-DEGENERATE STATIC VACUUM FIELDS

We study some known static vacuum solutions of Einstein's equations, n amely, the A and B metrics of Ehlers and Kundt. Ail of them have axial symmetry, so they can be transformed to the Weyl form. In Weyl coordi nates log root-g(44) obeys a Laplace equation, and from this a source, called the Newtonian image source, can be identified. We use the imag e sources to give a possible interpretation to the metrics. The proced ure is successful in some cases. In others it fails because the Weyl t ransform does not have reasonable properties at infinity.