Seeing star formation regions with gravitational microlensing

We qualitatively study the effects of gravitational microlensing on our view of unresolved extragalactic star formation regions. Using a general gravitational microlensing configuration, we perform a number of simulations that reveal that specific imprints of the star-forming region are imprinted, both photometrically and spectroscopically, on observations. Such observations have the potential to reveal the nature and size of these star-forming regions through the degree of variability observed in a monitoring campaign and hence resolve the star formation regions in distant galaxies that are too small to be probed via more standard techniques.