English

Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of the Aftermath of Microlensing Event MACHO-LMC-5

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

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\sim0.24'', 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\sim0.2 M_{\odot}. This demonstrates the potential of Spitzer to detect the lenses in other gravitational microlensing events.

Keywords

Cite

@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