Related papers: Augmenting WFIRST Microlensing with a Ground-based…
Observations at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths promise to revolutionize the study of high redshift galaxies and AGN by providing a unique probe of the conditions within heavily extinguished regions of star formation and nuclear…
To move one step forward toward a Galactic distribution of planets, we present the first planet sensitivity analysis for microlensing events with simultaneous observations from space and the ground. We present this analysis for two such…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
Cluster lensing has become an important tool in the search for high redshift galaxies through its ability to magnify sources. In order to determine the intrinsic properties of these galaxies, lensing mass models must be constructed to…
Despite the success of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens studies with Hubble-quality imaging, the number of well-studied strong lenses remains small. As a result, robust comparisons of the lens models to theoretical predictions are…
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is a 2.4m space telescope with a 0.281 deg^2 field of view for near-IR imaging and slitless spectroscopy and a coronagraph designed for > 10^8 starlight suppresion. As background information…
Interferometric observations of microlensing events have the potential to provide unique constraints on the physical properties of the lensing systems. In this work, we first present a formalism that closely combines interferometric and…
A space-based gravitational microlensing exoplanet survey will provide a statistical census of exoplanets with masses greater than 0.1 Earth-masses and orbital separations ranging from 0.5AU to infinity. This includes analogs to all the…
The density of stars and MACHOs in the universe could theoretically be determined or limited by simultaneous measurements of compact sources by well separated observers. A gravitational lens effect would be expected to create a slight…
Free-floating planets are recently drawing a special interest of the scientific community. Gravitational microlensing is up to now the exclusive method for the investigation of free-floating planets, including their spatial distribution…
Currently, gravitational microlensing survey experiments toward the Galactic bulge field utilize two different methods of minimizing blending effect for the accurate determination of the optical depth \tau. One is measuring \tau based on…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the…
We present the method of multiplexed imaging designed for astronomical observations of large sky areas in the IR, visible and UV frequencies. Our method relies on the sparse nature of astronomical observations. The method consists of an…
We explore the usefulness of future gravitational microlensing surveys in the study of binary properties such as the binary fraction and the distributions of binary separation and mass ratio by using the binary sample detectable through a…
We estimate the rate of near-field microlensing events expected from all-sky surveys and investigate the properties of these events. Under the assumption that all lenses are composed of stars, our estimation of the event rate ranges from…
As the time-domain survey telescope of the highest survey power in the northern hemisphere currently, Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is scheduled to hourly/daily/semi-weekly scan northern sky up to ~23 mag in four optical (ugri) bands.…
We discuss some of the practical considerations that need to be made in the design of extra-galactic field surveys using FIRST. We investigate the various limitations that confusion noise imposes on possible FIRST surveys and the benefits…
Observations from ground based telescopes are affected by the presence of the Earth atmosphere, which severely perturbs them. The use of adaptive optics techniques has allowed us to partly beat this limitation. However, image selection or…
General arguments for optimized coronagraphy in the search for planets are presented. First, off-axis telescopes provide the best telescopic platforms for use with coronagraphy, and telescope fabrication technology now allows the…