Related papers: Is Galactic Structure Compatible with Microlensing…
The gravitational microlensing as a unique astrophysical tool can be used for studying the atmosphere of stars thousands of parsec far from us. This capability results from the bending of light rays in the gravitational field of a lens…
I make a new evaluation of the microlensing optical depth toward the Galactic bar from Difference Image Analysis (DIA) of the MACHO Collaboration. First, I present supplementary evidence that MACHO field 104 located at (l,b) = (3.11,-3.01)…
The bulge of the Galaxy is analysed by inverting K-band star counts from the Two-Micron Galactic Survey in a number of off-plane regions. A total area of about 75 square degrees of sky is analysed. Assuming a non-variable luminosity…
We present measurements of the microlensing optical depth and event rate toward the Galactic bulge using the dataset from the 2006--2014 MOA-II survey, which covers 22 bulge fields spanning ~42 deg^2 between -5 deg < l < 10 deg and -7 deg <…
We study the prospects for the current microlensing searches, which have recently discovered several candidates, to yield useful information about the flattening of the Galaxy dark matter halo. Models of HI warps and N-body simulations of…
EROS has searched for microlensing toward four directions in the Galactic plane away from the Galactic center. The interpretation of the catalog optical depth is complicated by the spread of the source distance distribution. We compare the…
We performed an integrated optical polarization survey of 70 nearby galaxies to study the relationship between linear polarization and galaxy properties. To date this is the largest survey of its kind. The data were collected at McDonald…
Gravitational microlensing is a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. A point mass lens, usually a low-mass star from the disk, will typically resolve the surface of a red giant in the Galactic bulge, as well as amplify…
We calculate the optical depth and the number of events due to gravitational microlensing towards the Galactic bulge, the spiral arm directions $\gamma$ Scutum, $\beta$ Scutum, $\gamma$ Normae, $\vartheta$ Muscae and some dwarf galaxies in…
Aims. We seek to probe the Galactic bulge IMF starting from microlensing observations. Methods. We analyse the recent results of the microlensing campaigns carried out towards the Galactic bulge presented by the EROS, MACHO and OGLE…
The mass of the lenses giving rise to Galactic microlensing events can be constrained by measuring the relative lens-source proper motion and lens flux. The flux of the lens can be separated from that of the source, companions to the…
We describe a real-time spectroscopic program to observe bright gravitational microlensing events toward the Galactic Bulge. The program is carried out using the NTT at ESO. We present the preliminary analysis of the microlensing events we…
We compute the predicted optical depth and duration distribution of microlensing events towards Baade's window in a model composed of a Galactic disk and a bar. The bar model is a self-consistent dynamical model built out of individual…
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand the…
Gravitational microlensing surveys target very dense stellar fields in the local group. As a consequence the microlensed source stars are often blended with nearby unresolved stars. The presence of `blending' is a cause of major uncertainty…
We investigate how strong gravitational lensing can test contemporary models of massive elliptical (ME) galaxy formation, by combining a traditional decomposition of their visible stellar distribution with a lensing analysis of their mass…
The last decade of research on elliptical galaxies has produced a wealth of new information concerning both their detailed structure and their global scaling relations. We review the old and new results about isophote shapes and…
We present near-IR colour--magnitude diagrams and star counts for a number of regions along the Galactic plane. It is shown that along the l=27 b=0 line of sight there is a feature at 5.7 +-0.7kpc with a density of stars at least a factor…
Non-uniqueness of deprojecting the integrated light distribution of a nearby or faraway triaxial body is reviewed in the context of deriving the volume density of the Galactic bar from the COBE/DIRBE maps of the Galactic plane. The exact…
We present the analysis of the light curves of 8.5 million stars observed during two seasons by EROS (Experience de Recherche d'Objets Sombres), in the galactic plane away from the bulge. Three stars have been found that exhibit luminosity…