Related papers: Observations from Australasia using the Gravitatio…
Astrometry is one of the oldest branches of astronomy which measures the position, the proper motion and parallax of celestial objects. Following the Hipparcos and Gaia missions that have measured several billions of them using global…
Foundations of standard theory of microlensing are described, namely we consider microlensing stars in Galactic bulge, the Magellanic Clouds or other nearby galaxies. We suppose that gravitational microlenses lie between an Earth observer…
Large scale imaging surveys will increase the number of galaxy-scale strong lensing candidates by maybe three orders of magnitudes beyond the number known today. Finding these rare objects will require picking them out of at least tens of…
Astrophysical measurements away from the 1 AU orbit of Earth can enable several astrophysical science cases that are challenging or impossible to perform from Earthbound platforms, including: building a detailed understanding of the…
Antarctica provides a unique environment for astronomy. The cold, dry and stable air found above the high plateau, as well as the pure ice below, offers new opportunities across the photon & particle spectrum. The summits of the plateau…
We investigate the ability of ground based gravitational wave observatories to detect gravitational wave lensing events caused by stellar mass lenses. We show that LIGO and Virgo possess the sensitivities required to detect lenses with…
Over the past decade advancements in the understanding of several astrophysical phenomena have allowed us to infer a concordance cosmological model that successfully accounts for most of the observations of our universe. This has opened up…
Multiple images, giant arcs, Einstein cross, fold, cusp, lip, caustics, critical lines, sources, mapping, time delay, arclets, weak shear, magnification bias, depletion, ellipticities, polarization, smearing, convergence, kernel, mass…
Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
Specially-designed microlensing searches, some of which have been underway for several years, are sensitive to extrasolar planets orbiting the most common stars in our Galaxy. Microlensing is particularly well-suited to the detection of…
Earth observation from space is an important scientific and industrial activity that has applications in many sectors. The instruments employed are often large, complex, and expensive. In addition, they generate large amounts of data, which…
A measurement by microlensing of the planetary mass function of planets with masses ranging from 5M_E to 10M_J and orbital radii from 0.5 to 10 AU was reported recently. A strategy for extending the mass range down to (1-3)M_E is proposed…
Gravitational lensing time-delays using standard candles can provide tremendous leverage to cosmology. A recently discovered gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova, iPTF16geu, may yield a precise and accurate measurement of the Hubble…
The time delays of gravitationally lensed quasars are generally believed to be unique numbers whose measurement is limited only by the quality of the light curves and the models for the contaminating contribution of gravitational…
Using current technology, gravitational microlensing is the only method that can measure planet masses over the full parameter space of planet and stellar-host masses and at a broad range of planet-host separations. I present a…
Obtaining lensing time delay measurements requires long-term monitoring campaigns with a high enough resolution (< 1 arcsec) to separate the multiple images. In the radio, a limited number of high-resolution interferometer arrays make these…
Microlensing of distant stars in the Milky Way by the nearby high proper motion stars offers a direct way to precisely measure the masses of single lower main sequence stars and brown dwarfs.
Context. Astrometric gravitational microlensing can be used to determine the mass of a single star (the lens) with an accuracy of a few percent. To do so, precise measurements of the angular separations between lens and background star with…
OGLE and other projects are likely to discover first stellar mass black holes and the first planets through gravitational lensing in the next year or two. It is important to have follow-up projects ready, using diverse observing methods.…
Since the very beginning of astronomy the location of objects on the sky has been a fundamental observational quantity that has been taken for granted. While precise two dimensional positional information is easy to obtain for observations…