GRAVITATIONAL LENSING AND SUPERLUMINAL MOTIONS IN QUASARS - THE LINEAR-APPROXIMATION

We assume that the radio emission involved in superluminal motions in quasars orginated close to a compact object. We analyze the effect of the bending of light and gravitational time delay, due to the quasar's proper mass, on the apparent superluminal motions. For the sake of si mplicity we consider the source to be moving in a moderate gravitation al field region, in order to apply the linear approximation. We found that the relativistic beaming interpretation of the superluminal motio ns may be improved only if we accept huge masses for the quasar of the order of 10(12)-10(13) M(.).