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Register a new userThe Extreme Microlensing Event OGLE-2007-BLG-224: Terrestrial Parallax Observation of a Thick-Disk Brown Dwarf
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A. Gould
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Parallax is the most fundamental technique to measure distances to astronomical objects. Although terrestrial parallax was pioneered over 2000 years ago by Hipparchus (ca. 140 BCE) to measure the distance to the Moon, the baseline of the Earth is so small that terrestrial parallax can generally only be applied to objects in the Solar System. However, there exists a class of extreme gravitational microlensing events in which the effects of terrestrial parallax can be readily detected and so permit the measurement of the distance, mass, and transverse velocity of the lens. Here we report observations of the first such extreme microlensing event OGLE-2007-BLG-224, from which we infer that the lens is a brown dwarf of mass M=0.056 +- 0.004 Msun, with a distance of 525 +- 40 pc and a transverse velocity of 113 +- 21 km/s. The velocity places the lens in the thick disk, making this the lowest-mass thick-disk brown dwarf detected so far. Follow-up observations may allow one to observe the light from the brown dwarf itself, thus serving as an important constraint for evolutionary models of these objects and potentially opening a new window on sub-stellar objects. The low a priori probability of detecting a thick-disk brown dwarf in this event, when combined with additional evidence from other observations, suggests that old substellar objects may be more common than previously assumed.
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We present limits on the lens flux of OGLE-2007-BLG-224 based on MagAO imaging taken seven years after the microlensing event. At the time of the observations, the lens should have been separated from the microlensing source by 292 mas. However, no new sources are detected with MagAO. We place an upper limit on the lens flux of $H>20.57$. This measurement supports the conclusion of Gould et al. (2009) that the lens in this event should be a brown dwarf. This is the first test of a prediction based on the terrestrial microlens parallax effect and the first AO confirmation of a sub-stellar/dark microlens.
The kinematics of isolated brown dwarfs in the Galaxy, beyond the solar neighborhood, is virtually unknown. Microlensing has the potential to probe this hidden population, as it can measure both the mass and five of the six phase-space coordinates (all except the radial velocity) even of a dark isolated lens. However, the measurements of both the microlens parallax and finite-source effects are needed in order to recover the full information. Here, we combine $Spitzer$ satellite parallax measurement with the ground-based light curve, which exhibits strong finite-source effects, of event OGLE-2017-BLG-0896. We find two degenerate solutions for the lens (due to the known satellite-parallax degeneracy), which are consistent with each other except for their proper motion. The lens is an isolated brown dwarf with a mass of either $18pm1M_J$ or $20pm1M_J$. This is the lowest isolated-object mass measurement to date, only $sim$45% more massive than the theoretical deuterium-fusion boundary at solar metallicity, which is the common definition of a free-floating planet. The brown dwarf is located at either $3.9pm0.1$ kpc or $4.1pm0.1$ kpc toward the Galactic bulge, but with proper motion in the opposite direction of disk stars, with one solution suggesting it is moving within the Galactic plane. While it is possibly a halo brown dwarf, it might also represent a different, unknown population.
Due to the nature depending on only the gravitational field, microlensing, in principle, provides an important tool to detect faint and even dark brown dwarfs. However, the number of identified brown dwarfs is limited due to the difficulty of the lens mass measurement that is needed to check the substellar nature of the lensing object. In this work, we report a microlensing brown dwarf discovered from the analysis of the gravitational binary-lens event OGLE-2014-BLG-1112. We identify the brown-dwarf nature of the lens companion by measuring the lens mass from the detections of both microlens-parallax and finite-source effects. We find that the companion has a mass of $(3.03 pm 0.78)times 10^{-2} M_odot$ and it is orbiting a solar-type primary star with a mass of $1.07 pm 0.28 M_odot$. The estimated projected separation between the lens components is $9.63 pm 1.33$ au and the distance to the lens is $4.84 pm 0.67$ kpc. We discuss the usefulness of space-based microlensing observations in detecting brown dwarfs through the channel of binary-lens events.
We present an analysis of microlensing event OGLE-2016-BLG-0693, based on the survey-only microlensing observations by the OGLE and KMTNet groups. In order to analyze the light curve, we consider the effects of parallax, orbital motion, and baseline slope, and also refine the result using a Galactic model prior. From the microlensing analysis, we find that the event is a binary composed of a low-mass brown dwarf 49+-20 M_J companion and a K- or G-dwarf host, which lies at a distance 5.0+-0.6 kpc toward the Galactic bulge. The projected separation between the brown dwarf and its host star is less than 5 AU, and thus it is likely that the brown dwarf companion is located in the brown dwarf desert.
We report the discovery of a sub-Jupiter mass planet orbiting beyond the snow line of an M-dwarf most likely in the Galactic disk as part of the joint Spitzer and ground-based monitoring of microlensing planetary anomalies toward the Galactic bulge. The microlensing parameters are strongly constrained by the light curve modeling and in particular by the Spitzer-based measurement of the microlens parallax, $pi_mathrm{E}$. However, in contrast to many planetary microlensing events, there are no caustic crossings, so the angular Einstein radius, $theta_mathrm{E}$ has only an upper limit based on the light curve modeling alone. Additionally, the analysis leads us to identify 8 degenerate configurations: the four-fold microlensing parallax degeneracy being doubled by a degeneracy in the caustic structure present at the level of the ground-based solutions. To pinpoint the physical parameters, and at the same time to break the parallax degeneracy, we make use of a series of arguments: the $chi^2$ hierarchy, the Rich argument, and a prior Galactic model. The preferred configuration is for a host at $D_L=3.73_{-0.67}^{+0.66}~mathrm{kpc}$ with mass $M_mathrm{L}=0.30_{-0.12}^{+0.15}~mathrm{M_odot}$, orbited by a Saturn-like planet with $M_mathrm{planet}=0.43_{-0.17}^{+0.21}~mathrm{M_mathrm{Jup}}$ at projected separation $a_perp = 1.70_{-0.39}^{+0.38}~mathrm{au}$, about 2.1 times beyond the system snow line. Therefore, it adds to the growing population of sub-Jupiter planets orbiting near or beyond the snow line of M-dwarfs discovered by microlensing. Based on the rules of the real-time protocol for the selection of events to be followed up with Spitzer, this planet will not enter the sample for measuring the Galactic distribution of planets.
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