Related papers: Slott-Agape Project
Two teams are using the Isaac Newton Telescope to conduct a microlensing search for massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) in Andromeda. We discuss both the motivation of the surveys and the obstacles they must overcome. The key to success…
One of the possible astrophysical solutions to the galactic dark matter problem is the presence of a significant amount of ``dark'' compact objects (MACHOs) in galactic dark matter halos. MEGA (Microlensing Exploration of the Galaxy and…
The Angstrom Project is using a global network of 2m-class telescopes to conduct a high cadence pixel microlensing survey of the bulge of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), with the primary aim of constraining its underlying bulge mass…
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way, thus it is an important laboratory for studying massive dark objects in galactic halos (MACHOs) by gravitational microlensing. Such studies strongly complement the…
Microlensing is the tool of choice for the search and the analysis of compact halo objects ("MACHOs"), a still viable class of dark matter candidates at the galactic scale. Different analyses point towards an agreement in excluding dark…
The nature and the location of the lenses discovered in the microlensing surveys done so far towards the LMC remain unclear. Motivated by these questions we computed the optical depth for the different intervening populations and the number…
A new type of gravitational microlensing experiment toward a field where stars are not resolved is being developed observationally and theoretically: pixel lensing. When the experiment is carried out toward the M31 bulge area, events may be…
For the past five seasons, the Angstrom Project, an international microlensing collaboration, has been making observations of the central bulge of M31, the Andromeda galaxy, searching for microlensing events. This thesis describes the work…
In the framework of the search of dark matter in galactic halos in form of massive compact halo object (MACHOs), we discuss the status of microlensing observations towards the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy, M31. The detection…
Microlensing observations towards M31 are a powerful tool for the study of the dark matter population in the form of MACHOs both in the Galaxy and the M31 halos, a still unresolved issue, as well as for the analysis of the characteristics…
We present the first M31 candidate microlensing events from the Microlensing Exploration of the Galaxy and Andromeda (MEGA) survey. MEGA uses several telescopes to detect microlensing towards the nearby Andromeda galaxy, M31, in order to…
It is shown that a significant amount of detectable gravitational microlensing events that could potentially be found by MAssively Parallel Photometry (MAPP) projects (such as the MACHO, EROS and OGLE collaborations) will occur for stars…
In this paper we discuss the latest developments of the STRIP instrument of the "Large Scale Polarization Explorer" (LSPE) experiment. LSPE is a novel project that combines ground-based (STRIP) and balloon-borne (SWIPE) polarization…
We report the discovery of a short-duration microlensing candidate in the northern field of the POINT-AGAPE pixel lensing survey towards M31. The full-width half-maximum timescale is very short, just 1.8 days. Almost certainly, the source…
We report the final analysis of a search for microlensing events in the direction of the Andromeda galaxy, which aimed to probe the MACHO composition of the M31 halo using data collected during the 1998-99 observational campaign at the MDM…
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field telescope project focused on detecting optical counterparts to gravitational-wave sources. The GOTO Telescope Control System (G-TeCS) is a custom robotic control…
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a project dedicated to identifying optical counter-parts to gravitational-wave detections using a network of dedicated, wide-field telescopes. After almost a decade of design,…
We describe a new method to search for gravitational microlensing toward the Galactic bulge that employs a small camera rather than a conventional telescope and probes new regions of parameter space. The small aperture (~65 mm) permits…
We present results of a microlensing survey toward the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) carried out during four observing seasons at the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). This survey is part of the larger microlensing survey toward M31 performed by the…
The Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork (PLANET) is a worldwide collaboration of astronomers using semi-dedicated European, South African, and Australian telescopes to perform continuous, rapid and precise multi-band CCD photometric…