We have carried out photometry of the microlensing event MACHO-LMC-5 with Spitzer's IRAC ten years after the magnification of the LMC source star was recorded. This event is unique in the annals of gravitational microlensing: the lensing star itself has been observed using HST (once with WFPC2 and twice with ACS/HRC). Since the separation between the source and lens at the epoch of the Spitzer observations was ∼0.24′′, the two stars cannot be resolved in the Spitzer images. However, the IRAC photometry clearly establishes that the lens is a M5 dwarf star from its infrared excess, which in turn yields a mass of ∼0.2M⊙. This demonstrates the potential of Spitzer to detect the lenses in other gravitational microlensing events.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0406040,
title = {Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of the Aftermath of Microlensing Event MACHO-LMC-5},
author = {Hien Trong Nguyen and Nitya Kallivayalil and Michael Werner and Charles Alcock and Brian Patten and Daniel Stern},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0406040},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication, ApJS Spitzer Special Issue