Related papers: Microlensing optical depth towards the Galactic bu…
We examine the left-right asymmetry in the cleaned COBE/DIRBE near-infrared data of the inner Galaxy and show (i) that the Galactic bar is probably not seen very nearly end-on, and (ii) that even if it is, it is not highly elongated. The…
OGLE III and MOA II are discovering 600-1000 Galactic Bulge microlens events each year. This stretches the resources available for intensive follow-up monitoring of the lightcurves in search of anomalies caused by planets near the lens…
If the massive compact halo object (MACHO) fraction of the Galactic dark halo is f ~ 20% as suggested by some microlensing experiments, then about 1.2% of lensing events toward the Galactic bulge are due to MACHOs. For the 40% of these that…
Hundreds of gravitational microlensing events have now been detected towards the Galactic bulge, with many more to come. The detection of fine structure in these events has been theorized to be an excellent way to discover extra-solar…
I present a new analysis of the MACHO Project 5.7 year Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) microlensing data set that incorporates the effects of contamination of the microlensing event sample by variable stars. Photometric monitoring of MACHO LMC…
We analyze 1602 microlensing events found in the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) near-infrared (NIR) survey data. We obtain spatially-resolved, efficiency-corrected timescale distributions across the Galactic bulge…
The microlensing probability (optical depth $\tau$) toward the Galactic center carries information about the mass distribution of the Galactic bulge/bar, so can be used to constrain the very uncertain shape parameters of the bar. We find…
Recently, from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of one of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) events taken 6.3 years after the original lensing measurement, Alcock et al. were able to directly image the lens. Although the first resolved…
Although a source star is fainter than the detection limit imposed by crowding, it is still possible to detect an event if the star is located in the seeing disk of a bright star is and gravitationally amplified: amplification bias. Using a…
We report on our search for microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Analysis of 5.7 years of photometry on 11.9 million stars in the LMC reveals 13 - 17 microlensing events. This is significantly more than the $\sim$ 2 to 4…
Microlensing maps -- that is, contours of equal numbers of events per $10^6$ source stars -- are provided for the inner Galaxy under two alternative hypotheses : (1) the bulge is an oblate axisymmetric spheroid or (2) the bulge is a prolate…
We present the first systematic search for microlensing events with variability in their baselines using data from the third phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-III). A total of 137 candidates (88 new) was discovered…
Ongoing microlensing observations by OGLE and MOA regularly identify and conduct high-cadence sampling of lensing events with Einstein diameter crossing time, tau_E, of 16 or fewer days. Events with estimated values of tau_E of one to two…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool to search for a population of invisible black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way (MW), including isolated BHs and binary BHs at wide orbits that are complementary to gravitational wave observations.…
Current gravitational microlensing surveys are observing hundreds of millions of stars in the Galactic bulge - which makes finding rare microlensing events a challenging tasks. In almost all previous works, microlensing events have been…
We present a sample of microlensing events discovered in the Difference Image Analysis (DIA) of the OGLE-II images collected during 3 observing seasons, 1997--1999. 4424 light curves pass our criteria on the presence of a brightening…
Measurements of the microlensing optical depth, tau, towards the Galactic bulge appear to depend on the method used to obtain them. Those values based on the lensing of red clump giants (RCGs) appear to be significantly lower than those…
We present observations of 8 Galactic Bulge microlensing events taken with the 1.0m JKT on La Palma during 2000 June and July. The JKT observing schedule was optimized using a prioritizing algorithm to automatically update the target list.…
Galactic microlensing datasets now comprise in excess of $10^4$ events, and with the advent of next generation microlensing surveys that may be undertaken with facilities such as the Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST) and Roman Space…
We study the benefits of polarimetry observations of microlensing events to detect and characterize circumstellar disks around the microlensed stars located at the Galactic bulge. These disks which are unresolvable from their host stars…