Related papers: Lightcurve Classification in Massive Variability S…
Microlensing experiments today have a tantalizing result; they have detected an excess of microlensing events beyond what is expected from known stellar populations. These events could be due to a possible form of Halo dark matter. However,…
We have monitored 8.6 million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud for 1.1 years and have found 3 events consistent with gravitational microlensing. We place strong constraints on the Galactic halo content in the form of compact lensing…
We present the lightcurves of two microlensing events from the MACHO Project data that are likely to be due to lenses with masses similar to Jupiter's mass. Although the MACHO Project survey data are not sufficient to definitively establish…
We apply the pixel method of analysis (sometimes called ``pixel lensing'') to a small subset of the EROS-1 microlensing observations of the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The pixel method is designed to find microlensing events of…
The off-centered "bar" of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is commonly assumed, for simplicity's sake, to lie in the same plane as the LMC disk. Relaxing this assumption to the extent allowed by the observations, we can drastically change…
We use three-dimensional distributions of classical Cepheids and RR~Lyrae stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) to model the stellar density distribution of a young and old stellar population in that galaxy. We use these models to…
The MACHO project has been monitoring about ten million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud in the search for gravitational microlensing events caused by massive compact halo objects (Machos) in the halo of the Milky Way. In our standard…
We attempt to determine whether the MACHO microlensing source stars are drawn from the average population of the LMC or from a population behind the LMC by examining the HST color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of microlensing source stars. We…
The recent binary microlensing event toward the Small Magellanic Cloud MACHO-98-SMC-1 was alerted by the MACHO collaboration and monitored by many microlensing experiments for its complete coverage of the second caustic crossing. The…
MAssive Compact Halo Objects such as brown dwarfs, Jupiters, and black holes are prime candidates to comprise the dark halo of our galaxy. Paczynski noted that objects (dubbed MACHOs) with masses in the range $10^{-6}M_\odot < M \simlt 100…
We present an update of results from the search for microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) by EROS (Experience de Recherche d'Objets Sombres). We have now monitored 25 million stars over three years. Because of the small…
The simplest interpretation of the microlensing events towards the Large Magellanic Cloud detected by the MACHO and EROS collaborations is that about one third of the halo of our own Milky Way galaxy exists in the form of objects of around…
Microlensing can provide a useful tool to probe binary distributions down to low-mass limits of binary companions. In this paper, we analyze the light curves of 8 binary lensing events detected through the channel of high-magnification…
I review recent results from gravitational microlensing surveys of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The combined microlensing optical depth of the MACHO and EROS-1 surveys is tau_LMC = 2.1{+1.3/-0.8}* 10^{-7} which is substantially larger than…
Variable stars with well-calibrated period-luminosity relationships provide accurate distance measurements to nearby galaxies and are therefore a vital tool for cosmology and astrophysics. While these measurements typically rely on samples…
Microlensing surveys search for the transient brightening of a background star that is the signature of gravitational lensing by a foreground compact object. This technique is an elegant way to search for astrophysical candidates that might…
There are expected to be millions of isolated black holes in the Galaxy resulting from the death of massive stars. Measuring the abundance and properties of this remnant population would shed light on the end stages of stellar evolution and…
We discuss whether the Gaussian is a reasonable approximation of the velocity distribution of stellar systems that are not spherically distributed. By using a non-Gaussian velocity distribution to describe the sources in the Large…
Using 7 years of MACHO survey data, we present a new determination of the optical depth to microlensing towards the Galactic bulge. We select the sample of 62 microlensing events (60 unique) on clump giant sources and perform a detailed…
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…