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Astrometric observations of microlensing events can be used to obtain important information about lenses. During these events, the shift of the position of the multiple image centroid with respect to the source star location can be…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
We search for signatures of planets in 43 intensively monitored microlensing events that were observed between 1995 and 1999. Planets would be expected to cause a short duration (~1 day) deviation on the smooth, symmetric light curve…
The discovery of numerous free-floating planets (FFPs) has intensified interest in their origins and dynamical histories. A leading formation mechanism is planet-planet scatterings in unstable multi-planetary systems, which can naturally…
We use large simulations of Lyman-Alpha Emitters with different fractions of ionized intergalactic medium to quantify the clustering of Ly$\alpha$ emitters as measured by the Void Probability function (VPF), and how it evolves under…
High-cadence microlensing observations uncovered a population of very short-timescale microlensing events, which are believed to be caused by the population of free-floating planets (FFP) roaming the Milky Way. Unfortunately, the light…
We report a new free-floating planet (FFP) candidate, KMT-2017-BLG-2820, with Einstein radius $\theta_\e\simeq 6\,\muas$, lens-source relative proper motion $\mu_\rel \simeq 8\,\masyr$, and Einstein timescale $t_\e=6.5\,$hr. It is the third…
Over the past 25 years, observations have uncovered a large population of free-floating planets (FFPs), whose origins remain debated. Massive FFPs (several Jupiter masses or more) may form via gravitational collapse of molecular clouds,…
Searches for planets via gravitational lensing have focused on cases in which the projected separation, a, between planet and star is comparable to the Einstein radius, R_E. This paper considers smaller orbital separations and demonstrates…
In this paper we consider the Fermi's paradox (FP) and propose a possible resolution in the context of super-advanced alien civilizations. In this sense it can be regarded as to be the weak Fermi paradox (WFP). By assuming that…
Planet population synthesis models predict an abundance of planets with semi-major axes between 1-10 au, yet they lie at the edge of the detection limits of most planet finding techniques. Discovering these planets and studying their…
Gravitational microlensing is the only method capable of exploring the entire population of free-floating planets down to Mars-mass objects, because the microlensing signal does not depend on the brightness of the lensing object. A…
A microlensing survey by Sumi et al. (2011) exhibits an overabundance of short-timescale events (STEs; t_E<2 days) relative to what is expected from known stellar populations and a smooth power-law extrapolation down to the brown dwarf…
We present the first prediction for the mass distribution function of Galactic free-floating planets (FFPs) that aims to accurately include the relative contributions of multiple formation pathways and stellar populations. We derive our…
In contrast to radial velocity surveys, results from microlensing surveys indicate that giant planets with masses greater than the critical mass for core accretion ($\sim 0.1~M_{\rm Jup}$) are relatively common around low-mass stars. Using…
Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly…
Gravitational microlensing is one of the strongest observational techniques to observe non-luminous astrophysical bodies. Existing microlensing observations provide tantalizing evidence of a population of low-mass objects whose origin is…
Microlensing detections of cool planets are important for the construction of an unbiased sample to estimate the frequency of planets beyond the snow line, which is where giant planets are thought to form according to the core accretion…
From a sample of ~50000 early-type galaxies from the SDSS, we measured the traditional Fundamental Plane in four bands. We then replaced luminosity with stellar mass, and measured the "stellar mass" FP. The FP steepens slightly as one moves…
The extragalactic distance scale is fundamental to our understanding of astrophysics and cosmology. In recent years, the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method, applied in the near-IR, has proven especially powerful for measuring…