Related papers: Probing Galactic structure using micro-lensing wit…
After a decade of gravitational microlensing experiments, 13 to 17 events by MACHO (depending on quality) and two events by EROS have been detected. All of those have been observed in the direction of Large Magellanic Cloud. We use Evans…
EROS-II is a second generation microlensing experiment. The experimental setup, in operation at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at La Silla (Chile) since mid-1996 is briefly described together with its scientific objectives. The…
(Short version) The nature and the location of the lenses discovered in the microlensing surveys done so far towards the LMC remain unclear. This contribution is comprised of two distinct parts. In the first part, motivated by these…
We present and study the largest and the most comprehensive catalog of microlensing events ever constructed. The sample of standard microlensing events comprises 3718 unique events from years 2001--2009, with 1409 not detected before in…
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…
A large number of microlensing events have been observed in the direction of the Galactic bulge, with a measured optical depth in the range 2 - 3 x 10^{-6}. It has been shown that most of these events are due to bulge stars being lensed by…
During the months when the galactic bulge is visible from the southern hemisphere, there are typically about 8 to 10 on-going microlensing events at any given time. If the lensing stars have planets around them, then the signature of the…
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…
Measurements of the microlensing optical depth and event rate toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) can be used to probe the distribution and mass function of compact objects in the direction toward that galaxy - in the Milky Way disk,…
We compute a microlensing map for the Galactic bar. The predicted event rate and event duration distribution are consistent with the $55$ events recently reported by the MACHO and OGLE collaborations. Most of the events are due to lensing…
We present microlensing calculations for a Galactic model based on Han & Gould (2003), which is empirically normalised by star counts. We find good agreement between this model and data recently published by the MACHO and OGLE…
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…
The French collaboration EROS and the American-Australian collaboration MACHO have reported the observation of altogether $\sim$ 10 microlensing events by monitoring during several years the brightness of millions of stars in the Large…
The EROS and MACHO collaborations have reported observations of light curves of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are compatible with gravitational microlensing by intervening massive objects, presumably Brown-Dwarf stars. The OGLE…
After a decade of gravitational microlensing experiments, a dozen of microlensing candidates in the direction of the stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have been detected by the EROS and MACHO groups. Recently it was shown that the…
Microlensing observations toward globular clusters could be very useful to probe their low mass star and brown dwarf content. Using the large set of microlensing events detected so far toward the Galactic centre we investigated whether for…
Modern surveys of gravitational microlensing events have progressed to detecting thousands per year. Surveys are capable of probing Galactic structure, stellar evolution, lens populations, black hole physics, and the nature of dark matter.…
We present final results from the first phase of the EROS search for gravitational microlensing of stars in the Magellanic Clouds by unseen deflectors (machos: MAssive Compact Halo Objects). The search is sensitive to events with time…
We describe a real-time spectroscopic program to observe bright gravitational microlensing events toward the Galactic Bulge. The program is carried out using the NTT at ESO. We present the preliminary analysis of the microlensing events we…
We calculate the optical depth and the number of events due to gravitational microlensing towards the Galactic bulge, the spiral arm directions $\gamma$ Scutum, $\beta$ Scutum, $\gamma$ Normae, $\vartheta$ Muscae and some dwarf galaxies in…