Related papers: Massive Variability Searches: The Past, Present an…

Eclipsing binaries offer a unique opportunity to determine fundamental physical parameters of stars using the constraints on the geometry of the systems. Here we present a reanalysis of publicly available two-color observations of about…

As we enter the final year of the second extended mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), it is time to reflect on what the TESS mission has contributed to the advancement of astronomy. Thousands of papers based on TESS…

Modern astronomical surveys are producing datasets of unprecedented size and richness, increasing the potential for high-impact scientific discovery. This possibility, coupled with the challenge of exploring a large number of sources, has…

Microlensing searches aim to detect compact halo dark matter via its gravitational lensing effect on stars within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The most recent results have led to the claim that roughly one fifth of the galactic halo dark…

Astronomy has a long history of acquiring, systematizing, and interpreting large quantities of data. Starting from the earliest sky atlases through the first major photographic sky surveys of the 20th century, this tradition is continuing…

We review recent gravitational microlensing results from the EROS, MACHO, and OGLE collaborations, and present some details of the very latest MACHO results toward the Galactic Bulge. The MACHO collaboration has now discovered in excess of…

Motivated by the detection of a recent outburst of the massive luminous blue variable LMC-R71, which reached an absolute magnitude M_V = -9.3 mag, we undertook a systematic study of the optical variability of 1268 massive stars in the Large…

The recent publications of the DENIS Catalogue towards the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) with more than 1.3 million sources identified in at least two of the three DENIS filters (I J K_s) and of the incremental releases of the 2MASS point source…

The Magnetism in Massive Stars (MiMeS) survey represents a high precision systematic search for magnetic fields in hot, massive OB stars. To date, MiMeS Large Programs (ESPaDOnS@CFHT, Narval@TBL, [email protected]) and associated PI programs…

Variable stars have been used for over one hundred years as probes for determining astronomical distances; these distances can be used to map the three-dimensional (3D) structure of nearby galaxies. Exploiting the effect that moving to the…

The MACHO Project is a search for dark matter in the form of massive compact halo objects (Machos). Photometric monitoring of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and Galactic bulge is used to…

The number and properties of observed gravitational microlensing events depend on the distribution and kinematics of stars and other compact objects along the line of sight. In particular, precise measurements of the microlensing optical…

Ongoing microlensing surveys have already yielded more than five hundred microlensing events, most of which have been identified in real-time. In this review I present the basic theory and observational status of these surveys. I highlight…

The Magellanic System represents one of the best places to study the formation and evolution of galaxies. Photometric surveys of various depths, areas and wavelengths have had a significant impact on our understanding of the system;…

We present a collection of 991 heartbeat star (HBS) candidates found in the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) project data archive. We discuss the selection process of the HBS candidates and the structure of the catalog…

We study light variability of gravitationally magnified high-redshift star clusters induced by a foreground population of microlenses. This arises as the incoherent superposition of light variations from a large number of source stars…

The MACHO experiment is searching for dark matter in the halo of the Galaxy by monitoring more than 20 million stars in the LMC and Galactic bulge for gravitational microlensing events. The hardware consists of a 50 inch telescope, a…

The changing heavens have played a central role in the scientific effort of astronomers for centuries. Galileo's synoptic observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus starting in 1610, provided strong refutation of Ptolemaic…

Since the first discovery of microlensing events nearly two decades ago, gravitational microlensing has accumulated tens of TBytes of data and developed into a powerful astrophysical technique with diverse applications. The review starts…

The Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA (MASCARA) aims to find the brightest transiting planet systems by monitoring the full sky at magnitudes $4<V<8.4$, taking data every 6.4 seconds. The northern station has been operational on La Palma since…